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CD: Stevie Nicks - In Your Dreams

The ghostly-voiced one returns, still in hats, feathers and bodice-ripper gowns

by Adam SweetingTuesday, 21 June 2011

Dame Stevie taps into the 'Sleepy Hollow' vibe on her first album of new songs in a decade

It's been a decade since Stevie Nicks's last album of new songs, Trouble in Shangri-La, but In Your Dreams proves that there's creative life in the old girl yet. Fans of the wispy tunestrel will be pleased to hear that she hasn't strayed far from her familiar stomping grounds of melodious folk-rockism and tales of love and yearning, the focus (in fine Seventies style) fixing on the singer's emotional trials and torments. The voice that sang "Rhiannon" remains suitably ghostly, and even with an overlay of mild croakiness, it sounds pretty good for a 63-year-old.

The disc is crammed with a phonebook's worth of LA session veterans, from Steve Ferrone to Waddy Wachtel, and there are appearances by Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood. The Heartbreakers' Mike Campbell plays an assortment of instruments and co-wrote a couple of tracks, though not as many as Dave Stewart, who also co-produced the disc with Glen Ballard.

The best songs work very well indeed. Nicks opens with "Secret Love", a sturdily pulsing piece blitzed by growling powerchords as she sings of "a timeless search for a love that might work". Vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars underpin the affecting "For What it's Worth" (no relation to the Stephen Stills one), while the pick of the bunch may be the title track, a scintillating blast of jangle-rock which harks back to the days when Nicks used to hang around with Tom Petty and his crew.

That's not all. Nicks, still festooned in hats, feathers and bodice-ripper gowns after all these years, channels Edgar Allan Poe in "Annabel Lee", runs with the Undead in "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)", and evokes vampire chronicler Anne Rice in "New Orleans".

Her only problem was knowing when to stop. In Your Dreams lasts half an hour longer than Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, and the longer it goes on, the more you want to start pelting it with rotten fruit. "Everybody Loves You" is drab electropop, "Italian Summer" is cloying schmaltz, and "Ghosts are Gone" should have been called "The Day the Music Died". It'll all boil down into a nice playlist though.

Watch Stevie Nicks's video for "Secret Love"

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