Picking up work on a late ’90s solo album where he left off – originally, the album was called A Gift Of Screws and would’ve been a follow-up released only a few years after Out Of The Cradle – Lindsey Buckingham goes into territory that quite a few of his loyal fans will find unfamiliar: the music is stripped down to its bare essentials, sometimes almost all-acoustic, without the trademark elaborate studio production which became the trademark of his early work and his heyday with Fleetwood Mac. But there’s something just as elaborate about Under The Skin, though instead of studio trickery, what’s elaborate here is Buckingham’s sheer staggering musicianship.
The instrumentation is sparse, often consisting of layers of guitar (usually acoustic, though some electric work does sneak in here and there), simple percussion, and half-whispered, half-sung vocals. Vocals are often layered in and overdubbed, but the overall effect is deceptive – you think it’s a bit quieter than the fall-on rock songs Buckingham has given us in the past, but instead he’s almost forcing you to concentrate on the songs.
The songs are great this time around. When Out Of The Cradle was first released, I complained that Buckingham had charged us full “new album” price for an album that contained an awful lot of material that seemed like reheated Fleetwood Mac. This time around, he’s lived up to the songwriting chops that brought us rock classics like “Trouble” and “Go Your Own Way,” though where some of his past work sounded like songs that didn’t make it onto a Mac album, here they’re presented in a context where it’s hard to imagine a full-band sound on them. (Ironically, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood do actually play on “Down On Rodeo,” the Fleetwoodiest song of the bunch here; some of the Gift Of Screws songs were lifted from that project and handed over to Fleetwood Mac’s Say You Will, in some cases with minimal contributions from the other band members, and the tracks in question here may have been contenders for that album.)
The highlights include the Rolling Stones cover “I Am Waiting,” and the Buckingham originals “It Was You,” “Under The Skin” and “Cast Away Dreams” (let’s back up a little bit – for a renowned songwriter like Lindsey Buckingham, it really is unusual to hear a cover of someome else’s material). There’s another cover, Donovan’s “To Try For The Sun,” but it just doesn’t grab me despite being a nice enough song.
For those who aren’t grabbed by any of this material, and for some it may represent one stylistic 
shift too far away from Buckingham’s full-blast rock sound, an album leaning more in that direction is promised for sometime in 2007 – that is, unless one remembers that every other solo project that Buckingham announces winds up becoming a Fleetwood Mac album. Only time, and the apparently irresistible lure of Stevie Nicks, will tell.
- Not Too Late (4:42)
- Show You How (4:22)
- Under The Skin (3:57)
- I Am Waiting (3:34)
- It Was You (2:49)
- To Try For The Sun (3:14)
- Cast Away Dreams (4:28)
- Shut Us Down (3:57)
- Down On Rodeo (4:27)
- Something’s Gotta Change Your Mind (4:48)
- Flying Down Juniper (4:43)
Released by: Reprise
Release date: 2006
Total running time: 45:01