Kiln House: Fleetwood Mac Embraces (and Mocks) the Fifties
Written: Nov 24 '08
Product Rating:
Pros: A consistent and catchy record that's a welcome stylistic departure for the band.
Cons: None of the songs strike me as being essential Mac material.
The Bottom Line: Fleetwood Mac's first post-Peter Green album could have been a disaster, but this collection of good-time rock and bop-pop is a heartily enjoyable (if slight) treat.
floatingcity's Full Review: Kiln House by Fleetwood Mac
Come 1970, Fleetwood Mac found itself at yet another line-up crossroads, facing the blow of losing guitarist and founder member Peter Green to LSD-exacerbated schizophrenia. Its roster pruned down to four constituents (Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass, and Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer splitting guitar and songwriting duties), the situation was made no easier by concurrent living conditions, with the band members and their families being crammed into one building (which “Kiln House” is named for). Soldiering on, Jeremy Spencer took the musical lead, with the album’s direction illustrating just how much contrast existed between his and Green’s styles – where “Then Play On” was dark and feverish, “Kiln House” is tongue-in-cheek and exuberant, making it the group’s most accessible record at this point in its discography.
Overall, “Kiln House”’s sound falls somewhere between homage and parody of the predominant genres of the Fifties, featuring short, punchy rock songs and harmony-based pop ballads. Spencer’s tracks are the ones where the influence is most obvious, faithfully acknowledging the likes of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley without being afraid to get a good-humoured jab in at some of the cliches of the era. Nowhere is this more obvious than on “Blood on the Floor”; a perfect send-up of the ‘my baby left me’ sub-genre of country tunes, where he recounts how he’s “got a date with the hangman” after shooting his unfaithful partner – and sings it all with an hilariously affected Elvis twang.
Away from that moment of mockery, Spencer strives for a greater authenticity on several other numbers, doing a good job of capturing his intended atmosphere. Opener “This is the Rock” may not be a fantastic song in and of itself, but its gentle percussive shuffle, simple slide guitar phrasings and multi-part “wha-do-wah” backing vocals make it sound like it would blend seamlessly into a Fifties compilation record. “Buddy’s Song” even goes so far as to lift the rhythm from “Peggy Sue” (and drops a reference to the song in the lyrics, which are filled with allusions to its eponymous subject), and a take on “Hi-Ho Silver” produces a chugging rocker with some biting guitar lines, subtle saloon-style piano and the album’s most forceful vocal delivery.
Meanwhile, Danny Kirwan has made notable progression, shrugging off the hesitancies of yore and developing a gruffer approach to his folk-rock creations. “Jewel-Eyed Judy” is a charming ballad that flows from a typically pensive, melodic verse to near-shouted desperation in the chorus, being more emotionally convincing than anything he’d recorded before. There’s also the pretty instrumental “Earl Grey”, which continues the acoustic abstraction of “Then Play On”’s “My Dream”, but possesses a much statelier character; emerging the superior track for it.
Unfortunately, Danny does go on to churn out a couple of forgettable pieces (“Tell Me All The Things You Do”, a pleasant mid-tempo rocker marred by a two-line melody consisting of variations on the title sung again and again; and “Station Man”, a six-minute blues-derived plod that could be chopped in half with no loss of musical content), but neither of them are bad – and astute listeners should be able to pick out backing vocals from one Christine Perfect, whose recent marriage to John McVie would be promptly followed by an invitation to join the band full-time (and what a worthwhile invitation it would be).
Anyway, it says a lot about “Kiln House” that even its lesser moments still have something to commend, and the intra-group dynamic feels particularly tight given the circumstances of its creation. A more cynical assessment might note that the decision to record Fifties-inspired material was serving as a stopgap to cover for the band’s lack of a well-honed writer, but most of these songs are enthusiastic and sincere enough to make it dissipate. While not being an essential Mac recording, “Kiln House” is another solid milestone in its chronology, and at the very least it stands out for being the group’s sole Jeremy Spencer-directed album; an innocent good time with enough charm and musicianship to make it endure. 3 stars.
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