Stevie Nicks
Rock A Little
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"You can talk to me," Stevie Nicks coos on the chorus of her latest hit single. "You can set your secrets free, baby." She's got a sympathetic ear, all right. On the rest of Rock a Little, she comes on like an AM-radio psychologist, dispensing stem but friendly advice, spinning little parables and probing deep feelings with incredibly vague language. It's all quite earnest and usually fairly tuneful; Stevie's distinctive growl can attach a hook to some pretty slippery sentiments. But for a pop album, Rock a Little sounds strangely distant, out of touch. Plopped down next to purring synthesizers and the patter of drum machines, Stevie's sugary moans sound harsh and jarring. The
Read More attempts to "contemporize" some of these 4/4 strum-along ditties ruin what would otherwise be an untouched curio, a relic from the forgotten age of the singer/songwriter. Not that it was all that long ago. But it's odd how so many of the rock and pop bands of the Seventies have lost their way in this decade. Even such sturdy pines as Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne bend and sway on their recent releases, battered by shifting tastes not only in music but in subject matter and style as well. Only the newly shorn former Eagles Don Henley and Glenn Frey, recasting themselves as sleek, rough-voiced crooners in the Miami Vice mold, have managed to age gracefully. And compared with Henley's taut command of modern dance music on Building the Perfect Beast, Stevie seems a bit shaky. The guitar-based music on Rock a Little sounds unfocused, at times almost nostalgic. It's disquieting hearing a song with the line "Our voices stray from the common ground where they could meet" on the same station with, oh, "Stop using sex as a weapon." Stevie Nicks may have prefigured Madonna's and Prince's lace fetishes, but the tart frankness of today's Top Ten makes her seem a bit of a prude. "Talk to Me" plows along with the easy momentum of a Cyndi Lauper hit, the chugging guitars broken by synth wallops for emphasis. But Stevie's bluesy murmur sounds a little tired, as if all she wants to do is talk, thanks. On the opening cut, "I Can't Wait," she waxes urgent but ultimately gets shellacked by layers of buzz-saw guitars and a nervous beat box. As for a statement of purpose, "I Sing for the Things" ("that money can't buy," natch) is definitely postfeminist: "I'll take off my cape for you ... Anything you want me to do.... I'll sit at home and wait for you." Maybe it's just my taste, but the combined synths and steel guitars on that track achieve the consistency of curdled milk. On the aforementioned tunes, at least, Stevie is being direct. When she starts setting her secrets free, weaving apocryphal situations and creating moony, enigmatic characters, the going gets a bit thick. Well, there's "Sister Honey," who discovers that "a soul that's true is your ride to glory." Or take Lily, the "rock and roll ballerina" in the title tun
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