For almost four decades, on and off, Lindsey Buckingham has been the driving force behind one of the world’s biggest bands, Fleetwood Mac. He is the charismatic architect of Rumours and Tusk, whose songs are familiar to millions, yet it’s often the case that many Mac nuts, particularly outside the US, would be hard-pushed to name one of the guitarist’s five solo albums, let alone pick a highlight from any of them. That doubtless says more about the fairweather nature of the band’s conservative fanbase, though to his credit, Buckingham, one of the more gifted players of his generation, has never appeared to crave attention even though he’s spent his career in the spotlight. Cast as a maverick when he indulged various eccentric recording methods for 1979’s landmark Tusk, the tag has stuck. As a solo artist, Buckingham is, at the age of 61, enjoying a fine run of form. Seeds We Sow is his third album in five years, following 2006’s Under The Skin and 2008’s Gift Of Screws, records which the Californian singer-songwriter discovered were welcomed by a new audience who’d been enchanted by Fleetwood Mac’s surprisingly harmonious 2003 reunion and tour after 16 years apart. Their comeback set, Say You Will, from that year, was solid enough, its best song a tumbling, guitar-speckled Buckingham number called “Red Rover”. In concert, too, his solo rendition of “Big Love” illustrated the range of his exquisite fretwork and power of his star-crossed vocal. Comparison with Stevie Nicks’ latest solo effort is unnecessary, so let’s just say Buckingham’s passion for his craft is obvious. What’s noteworthy is that both Gift Of Screws and Under The Skin stemmed from or before those Mac sessions; Seeds We Sow, a mellower affair, is an entirely new set of songs, and, lush and reflective, it unfolds as such. Buckingham composed, produced and mixed the record in his LA home studio, playing almost every instrument, even overseeing its release via the independent label Eagle. Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac are out of contract with Warners, though you suspect the major would’ve stuck with him if he could guarantee a healthy return. As it is, removed from the pressure of label and band, he’s a free agent who can feed his rebellious streak. Go his own way, so to speak. Couple this with his happy domestic situation – he married in 2000 aged 50 and has three children – and it was always unlikely he’d produce a record as unhinged as 1984’s Go Insane. That’s not to say Buckingham is set in his ways. On the contrary, though he specialises in two types of song, the fluid acoustic flourish and the rockier stomp, he explores variations of these with the youthful vigour of a person one third his age. There’s a “Tusk”-like shuffle to “One Take” which he decorates with an outrageous Yngwie Malmsteen shred, while the distinctive shimmering harmony of “In Our Own Time” and simple interlocking riffs of “Rock Away Blind” can really only be called Buckinghamesque; no-one else plays with such elegance. If there’s one track that will draw newcomers to Seeds We Sow, it’s “Stars Are Crazy”, one of the loveliest songs Buckingham has ever written. Over tantalising fingerwork he pines for a lover before howling at the moon as the chorus erupts, sending shivers of delight through the listener. A closing tiptoe through the Stones’ “She Smiled Sweetly” could be Buckingham paying his dues to Jagger and Richards, but the distinction here is that, though his songbook, like theirs, is already abundant, Seeds We Sow suggests that there’s plenty more to come. Piers Martin

Signed to a languid, art school indie label, Throwing Muses arrived under cover. Like another uncharacteristic 4AD signing of around this time – the Pixies – Throwing Muses therefore got to be a singularly explosive rock’n’roll band without being burdened by the need to act, talk or think like one. It’s not overly fanciful to perceive the Muses and Pixies – they toured together frequently upon their emergence – as the bridge from the punk-infuenced American college rock of the 1980s to the grunge of the early 1990s (significantly, Throwing Muses counted among their fans both Michael Stipe and Kurt Cobain). Given Throwing Muses’ cheerful disdain for anything resembling careerism, it is actually unsurprising that their biggest commercial hit, “Dizzy”, and several other of their best-known songs, including “Counting Backwards”, “Firepile” and “Shimmer” are omitted, along with the fizzier cuts contributed by Hersh’s half-sister Tanya Donelly during her tenure – while the bonus disc faithfully compiles their 22 b-sides. This, however, is a worthwhile acquisition even for those already in possession of the Muses’ catalogue, especially for the likes of “Cottonmouth”, “Hillbilly” and “Crayon Sun”, although their formidable onstage potence is under-represented, with just two live tracks. The strength of Throwing Muses was always that, to a greater degree than most artists, they were doing what they were doing because they had to. Hersh has often said that she feels less like an author of her songs than a conduit for fully formed work visited upon her by forces over which she has little control (the refrain of “Summer Street”, keening “One lonesome body/One lonesome song”, perhaps more briskly enapsulates Hersh’s relationship with her art). Certainly, it is difficult to imagine anyone sitting down and deliberately writing the agitated manifesto “Hate My Way”, or the catatonic yodel “A Feeling”, or the frenetic hoedown “Mania”: terrifying and funny, wretched and exuberant, often in the space of a single verse. In Hersh’s poised and hilarious memoir, Rat Girl, she concludes a bemusedly horrified description of “ambitious” musicians with the important caveat :“But the musicians who make noises for noise’s sake fascinate us. Their vocabulary is slamming joy and desperation, lethargy and force.” It’s difficult to improve on this catalogue of contradiction as a description of Throwing Muses’ palette. They were a band capable of the most exquisite prettiness: the fragile and spectral “Two Step”, which served as the finale of Throwing Muses poppiest album, 1991’s The Real Ramona. They could also summon immense squalls of (entirely rocking) rage: “Furious”, from 1992’s Red Heaven, rendered much of the output of the contemporary grunge boom somewhat milquetoast by comparison. Though Throwing Muses emerged from an underground milieu disdainful of almost all rock’n’roll orthodoxy, their ability to command the broad range of Hersh’s songs was enabled by an unmistakable degree of old-school – if unusually egoless – musicianship. Carrying Hersh’s voice were her own colossal guitar, and one of the finest rhythm sections ever assembled: a succession of elegant, sinous bassplayers (Leslie Langston, Fred Abong, Bernard Georges) and drummer David Narcizo, a deceptively diffident hybrid of The Attractions’ Pete Thomas and Blondie’s Clem Burke. Holding together something like the helter-skelter of “Bright Yellow Gun” is a good deal more difficult than they make it sound. Capricious track selection notwithstanding, this is a document that prompts renewed wonder at one of the most astonishing canons of the entire post-punk era. Twenty-five years ago, nobody had ever heard anything like Throwing Muses. Twenty-five years later, that’s still the case. Andrew Mueller Q+A KRISTIN HERSH How did you choose the songs on Anthology? I sort of left it up to [David] Narcizo. I have a tendency to cringe when I hear anything by us, so I’d have wanted everything taken off. How do you feel about these old songs now? The real songs have changed over time, because they’re real – they’re not static. The fake songs don’t do that – and there aren’t any on this album. A real song is so vivid, it’s a different kind of memory, like someone gave you a shot of the past. Your biggest hit single, “Dizzy”, is notable by its absence. Well, that’s a horrible song. We did that to give Warners a bad song to work on. They kept saying to us, implicitly at least, you should suck more. Any concrete news on the new Throwing Muses album? It’s this long piece where songs come and go and show up in each other. It’s like Broadway or something. Nobody would let us do it if they were in charge, but nobody cares anymore because we’re so old. INTERVIEW: ANDREW MUELLER