Lindsey Buckingham – Out Of The Cradle

This album was rather quietly released with the support of the single “Countdown” which was a rather tame iteration of many staples of Buckingham’s Fleetwood Mac style. But despite that, it was one of the better songs on the album. For all the hoopla surrounding his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987 and all the immense talent he brought to both the Mac’s 70s/80s sound and his own previous solo work, this album, about five years in the making, was a bit disappointing. That said, Out Of The Cradle isn’t a total loss either. The opening track “Don’t Look Down” is much more exemplary of what I’m looking for if I listen to Lindsey Buckingham, and “All My Sorrows” and “Street of Dreams” come in close behind. One of the really neat things about this CD is that some of the songs have extended intros which are separate tracks. This may not seem like a big deal, but since I was working in radio when this album was released, I thought it was just incredibly handy (but it’s a real bugger if you’ve got a random or shuffle button on your CD player!). The final two tracks, a beautiful acoustic guitar instrumental cover of a Rodgers & Hammerstein number called “This Nearly Was Mine” (I honestly can’t say where the song comes from, though) followed by Buckingham’s own sentimental “Say We’ll Meet Again”, make me wish that he’d done more of the album in this style than trying to rekindle Fleetwood Mac vibes. One of my biggest gripes with the album is a song which sounds like a rough keyboard demo of “Big Love” from Buckingham’s last album with Fleetwood Mac. It’s a blatant attempt to make it sound like you don’t need Fleetwood Mac for the Fleetwood Mac sound (and I liked the Mac’s post-Buckingham Behind The Mask quite well, thank you). There are commercial considerations, of course – one must have reasonable sales from one album in order to make the next – but there are some artists who forego commercialism in order to be interesting and experimental. Lindsey Buckingham used to be one of those, but you’d hardly know it from listening to Out Of The Cradle.

1. instrumental introduction to Don’t Look Down (0:25)
2. Don’t Look Down (2:47)
3. Wrong (4:19)
4. Countdown (3:21)
5. All My Sorrows (4:01)
6. Soul Drifter (3:27)
7. instrumental introduction to This is the Time (0:41)
8. This is the Time (4:49)
9. You Do Or You Don’t (3:37)
10. Street of Dreams (4:28)
11. spoken introduction to Surrender the Rain (3:39)
12. Surrender the Rain (3:39)
13. Doing What I Can (4:05)
14. Turn It On (3:50)
15. This Nearly Was Mine (1:38)
16. Say We’ll Meet Again (2:28)

Released by: Reprise
Release date: 1992
Total running time: 51:14