Stevie Nicks: Street Angel : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Although Stevie Nicks' child-woman persona has served her well for 20 years, it's long overdue for the doe-eyed innocent to get tough. Her steadfast adherence to a fairy-tale world is endearing but frustrating. Curiously for a woman of such influence – just listen to Kristin Hersh or Tori Amos – Nicks still shrinks from her anger. Refusing to spit and kick like Bonnie Raitt or Kim Gordon, she trembles instead, a little girl made helpless by uncaring men and her own isolation.

Not to say that Nicks' fifth solo release, Street Angel, doesn't possess a certain flaky charm – her rendering of the dusky mysticism of the Hollywood Hills is, to say the least, unique. Swirling with angels and rainstorms, Angel unfolds as an engaging effort, though it gets off to a creaky start.

"Blue Denim" is an ordinary single that falls into a formulaic rock beat, and "Destiny" anemically rehashes Nicks' bouncy "Enchanted" from The Wild Heart (1983). But six songs in, Angel finally takes off. "Unconditional Love" and "Rose Garden" are gorgeous. The willful "Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind" is one of Nicks' best songs in years. Even her nostril-flaring cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" demonstrates a bizarre intelligence, the lyrics adapting strangely to Nicks' oeuvre of lost little women.

Street Angel neither flies nor falters but sits confused on a cloud. That's a pity. Nicks and her past producers were capable of a far more sensuous touch. "Silver Springs," "Sara" and "Leather and Lace," among others, were stunning songs that addressed the world according to Nicks without pretense.

Nowadays, singing more like a female Bon Jovi than the exuberant sprite she was in bygone Lindsey Buckingham/Richard Dashut years, Nicks flounders in gossamer and overpowering guitar licks, too entangled in her own fantasy to open her musical vision to the rest of us.