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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: Rhino / Wea
Salesrank: 12910
Released: March 23, 2004 |
| Our Price: $15.73 |
| Used Price: $12.99 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
If your personal turmoil and professional musical struggles suddenly yielded more success and money than you could ever imagine, what would you do? A lesser '70s rock band recorded Don't Look Back; Fleetwood Mac made Tusk. Whether it was a firm, middle-finger salute to the weighty commercial expectations foisted upon them in the wake of Rumours' burgeoning successes or a restless creative response to the then-shifting tides of pop music taste, this 1979 20-track double album remains the most consistently adventurous project any incarnation of the veteran band ever attempted. This remastered, double-disc deluxe edition's 21-track bonus disc of demos and outtakes seems to argue for the latter, new wave-fueled influences, bringing together a dizzying range of performances that underscore everything from Lindsey Buckingham's Brian Wilson jones (the warm, inventive harmonies of the band's dreamy outtake of the Beach Boys chestnut "Farmer's Daughter") to Christine McVie's knack for jazz-bluesy heat ("One More Time," which ultimately became "Over and Over") and pop hooks ("Think About Me") and Stevie Nicks's pop-goddess hoodoo (deliciously spare, fragile versions of "Sara," "Storms," and "Sisters of the Moon"). Most of the demos and outtakes here are imbued with a funky, loose-limbed spirit that offer new insight into their creation. But, as on the finished album, it's Buckingham's endlessly inventive creative spirit that dominates, from the chunky-rhythmed "Can't Walk out of Here" and "Out on the Road" (which became "The Ledge" and "That's Enough For Me," respectively) to three separate early recordings that chronicle the evolution of "I Know I'm Not Wrong." Rumours may be ubiquitous; Tusk remains unique. --Jerry McCulley
Tusk Reviews:
Could've Been A Contender 
2009-09-23 - This album came on the heels of FM's masterpiece, seminal album Rumours. It isn't a great album and should've been pared down from a double album to about 11 songs. These would've been my choice of songs for this album.
Think About Me
Sara
That's All For Everyone
What Makes You Think You're the One
Sisters Of The Moon
Angel
Brown Eyes
Storms
Honey Hi
Beautiful Child
Tusk
The problem is not a lack of good material, it is a lack of great material. Following Rumours we should expect much better from them, but it was an impossible act to follow and the free license that the success of Rumours gave the band was this album's undoing. Stevie Nicks saves the collection with her contributions even though Christine McVie and Lindsay Buckingham suffer from an obsession with mid-tempo filler that make listening to Tusk an encumbered task. Sara is the best song on the album and belongs on Rumours due to its lyrical content and high-quality musicianship.The song is a masterpiece in and of itself.
Lindsey Buckingham, this time around, seems to sacrifice soulful songwriting to play with production on his own songs and Christine McVie can only deliver ballads that, although nice, slow down the album too much. The album desperately needs 2 or 3 rockers with the intensity of Go Your Own Way, The Chain or Don't Stop. Instead we get a mediocre follow-up to one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Still, there are a few numbers that are worthy of the Fleetwood Mac label.
These are:
SARA
That's All For Everyone
SISTERS OF THE MOON
Angel
Brown Eyes
BEAUTIFUL CHILD
TUSK
Of those, the ones in uppercase are the only true classics.
The album is not a total loss, but it's hard to digest so much slower material interspersed with very few true standouts; definitely one for completists and fans of soft, ballad rock. It does get better with repeated listens but it never comes close to the greatness that were the 2 albums preceding it.
The remastering is as good as it gets as is the case for the remastering job on Rumours and the eponymous Fleetwood Mac album. I don't care much for outtakes, so I won't comment on the extra disc. It's probably of interest only to hardcore fans.
The complete go-to Mac 
2009-09-19 - When you put on this album, it's not rock music you're wanting -- it's Fleetwood Mac music. It might take a few years to see how much better this is than RUMOURS, which has a few great songs but not this measure of cohesion, and is not this complete an achievement in terms of distinction. I've determined that what makes this record rock in such style is mostly the mastery of rhythm by the apparently underrated Mick Fleetwood. Check out the intensely seductive use of restraint on "Brown Eyes." By the song's end, you've had to stop yourself several times from lustfully grabbing this Christine "sha-la-la"-shimmer persona cooing to you -- you have to "respect" this woman or this waif...so you check back to what the beat is telling you; it does a few things to be sure; and then, THEN, at fade-out, Mick's drums finally let your hips slam her in full 4x4 time. So the rhythm isn't about license, it's about priming your body. What also helps with the cohesive style is having Christine grab ahold of so many songs because either she simply does them better, or Stevie was in the bathroom. Nicks does give us the best ballad here, "Storms"; almost as good as the ballads McVie usually gives. But you sense the sophisticated collaborative chemistry of the band when Christine sings, and you smile at her raspy "yeah!"s and how a tune can go from 0 to 60 in the first half-bar and still have something great to make you feel on more than one level. Now you're rocking with the band who's giving you the best of their career. In my opinion, MIRAGE is Mac's other album where every song is mature and a winner.
UPDATE: the remaster is not up to the quality of Bill Inglot's work on the Yes catalogue the previous year. Slightly better bottom sound but muddier highs than the old CD.
Excellent!!!
2009-07-18 - Tusk is one of the best albums of this fantastic band. It's a must in any collection!
Horrid remaster 
2009-05-03 - When I saw Bill Inglot's name attached to this remaster I thought, thank goodness they got somebody with a proven track record. I own at least a couple dozen discs remastered by Inglot, and while I suppose some could accuse him of having a heavy hand with the equalizer, I generally find the results spectacular. His Dionne Warwick hits CD from a decade or so ago is just stunning.
So imagine how disappointed I was when I popped this disc into my car stereo and heard the flattest, dullest sounding recording I've ever heard associated with the name "Fleetwood Mac". Now, granted, Tusk always had a hot high-end, even on LP. The original CD was delightfully bright throughout, but could certainly be accused of being shrill in spots. I expected any remastering to correct that occasional harshness. What I did not expect was for the remastering to dull the sound so dramatically.
Gone are the wonderful details formerly audible in the brilliant guitar work on this record. Gone is the sense of space and ambiance in the vocals. Gone are the high, airy harmonies in songs like "Sara" and "I Walk A Thin Line". Mick Fleetwood's wonderful cymbals have been defanged and deflated. Even the lowly triangle on "Honey, Hi" has been rendered a square.
All of that sonic goodness has been replaced by an awfully tubby, booming, intrusive and annoying mid-bass. It sounds like Tusk as played on the cheap Sears stereo my parents gave me in the early '80s. Horrid.
The only good thing I can say about this remaster is that the deep bass has been enhanced, which it probably needed to be - at least a bit - to compensate for the original's hot high-end. Unfortunately, with the high-end sanded flat, the deep bass now sounds entirely out of proportion with the rest of the material.
All this clumsy sonic tweaking has dramatically altered the balance of the vocals and instruments in the mix as well, resulting in weird artifacts. The block work in "Honey, Hi" for example goes from being a minor background element to becoming an intrusive annoyance, like there's a cricket loose in the room. Christine McVie's vocals are pushed right off the soundstage in several tracks - she ends up sounding like she's singing off in a distant corner of the studio, with the band drowning her out. The results sound nothing like any prior releases of Tusk - the LP, the tracks from the original Greatest Hits CD or The Chain boxed set. That's a sign something has gone terribly wrong with this remastering. You'd think *somebody* at the studio would have noticed . . .
I have to say, I've been terribly disappointed with a number of "remastered" discs over the past couple of years. Not only are these "remasterings" not correcting for obvious flaws, they're frequently introducing new flaws and end up sounding far worse than the original releases. Botched jobs like this are simply encouraging me to save my money and spend it on something other than records. The studios really need to get their act together if they want to continue cashing in on the remaster gravy train.
Fantastic Reissue!
2008-11-22 - Incredible 2nd bonus disc, great booklet, fantastic sound- the 3 Fleetwood Mac reissues are treasures to revisit again and again. If only we could have follow-up expanded reissues of 'Mirage', "Tango In The Night' and anything solo by Stevie Nicks. The 'cleaning lady' version of "Sara" is a gorgeous standout on Disc 2, with some of the most incredible singing ever by Stevie Nicks ("and the wind became crazy")-- Thank you Fleetwood Mac- i see incredibly insightful, VERY well-written song-by-song reviews here, so read those, i just wanted to add my enthusiastic 5 star rating-- and if there were 6 for the 'Rumours' re-issue, i'd give it at least that!
