Today's Sounds: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac

Record:

Various Arists Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac (Hear Music/Conchord)

I’m not exactly a fan of Fleetwood Mac. I wasn’t a fan of the Carpenters either, but when If I Were a Carpenter came out in 1994, I learned to appreciate their songs through the alt-rock filter of bands like Sonic Youth (I still love their creepy version of “Superstar”) and Grant Lee Buffalo.

If you have any punk rock in you, Fleetwood Mac is a tough sell, or at least it used to be. Now everyone seems to love Rumours, even though “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” clearly stinks. But that was their 11th album, and the band’s multiple phases were vastly different. By the time Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined in 1974, they’d already transitioned from a heavy blues band to a rote ’70s rock band. Rumours (1977) was a pop record, and mainstream success followed.

So here, from the same team that brought you last year’s Rave On Buddy Holly tribute, is a reintroduction to Fleetwood Mac, with 19 tracks that span their career. There are two tracks from Rumours: “Dreams,” dragged to “Superstar”-style depths by the Kills, and “Gold Dust Woman,” delivered fairly straight but with suitable sass by Karen Elson — Lykke Li also does wonders with the deeply melancholy “Silver Springs,” a Rumours-era b-side.

From the band’s previous, eponymous 1975 record, the first to feature Buckingham and Nicks, “Rhiannon” is sweetly rendered by Best Coast (whose singer Bethany Cosentino told us about her love of Fleetwood Mac a couple weeks back); from 1979’s Tusk, “Think About Me” gets gorgeously gang-banged by the New Pornographers, Tame Impala roll down a cotton-candy hill in slow motion on “That’s All for Everyone” and DFA Records act Crystal Ark goes to town on the album’s title track, transformed with beats, synths and hushed chanting; and Washed Out scatters space dust over “Straight Back,” from 1982’s Mirage.

Not every track here is stellar, that’s for sure. But the aforementioned solid stack of tunes by top-shelf contemporary artists is like a fresh breath of cocaine up my asshole.

Track:

Menace Ruine “Salamandra”

This internationally renowned local band reveals a new noisy incantation, to appear on their next album, Alight in Ashes, out Oct. 12 on Profound Lore.

Video:

TEEN “Electric”

See this clever burst of pastels and choreography, by the creator of Santigold’s “Disparate Youth” (Sam Flesichner), and start getting excited about the Aug. 28 release of the Brooklyn band’s debut album, In Limbo (Carpark).