
Some of this record’s groovy, licentious aura is stoked by the circumstances of its creation: during recording, the group’s two couples — John and Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks — were breaking up, and drummer Mick Fleetwood was hardly an innocent bystander. All that sloppy, vengeful friction infuses songs like “Go Your Own Way” and “Never Going Back Again” with a fury that even the very L.A. production can’t smother. The rest comes down to individual strengths: Christine McVie’s tough-talking smoothness; Nicks’ vulnerability; Buckingham’s precise guitar, and the taut blues rhythms of John McVie and Fleetwood.