Fleetwood Mac - Mirage box set

The Guardian 80

(Warners)

This ultra-shiny remastering of Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage – clearly someone out there thought the band just didn’t sound cokey enough – gives us a chance to reappraise what has become an unfairly overlooked Mac album. After the wilful experimentation of Tusk and with the band branching out into solo projects and drug despair, Mirage probably seemed like a half-arsed statement at the time – a return to the band’s AOR pop songwriting days that didn’t quite match up to the likes of their self-titled 1975 album and Rumours. But with songs of the calibre of Gypsy, Book of Love and Love in Store – before you even get to the second side – and with the band’s dark undercurrent present and correct, Mirage still outshines most of the current crop of Mac imitators. Included in this box set is a weighty slab of vinyl, a 1982 live set from the Forum in Los Angeles – notable for Lindsey Buckingham cackling maniacally on Not That Funny – and an outtakes disc that includes previously unreleased versions of Gypsy and Oh Diane among other things. A suitably decadent reupholstering.