In Your Dreams, Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks brings her A game to In Your Dreams, her first studio album in ten years and one that, depending on your point of view, either establishes her as one of rock and roll's elder statespeople or cements the fact once and for all. Die-hard fans needn't worry, for all of the essential Stevieness from mystical lyrics to flowing gowns are there, but so is the unmistakable authority of forty years of doing this and doing it well. As writer and as singer, a rock singer's voices are intertwined, and Nicks' have never been better. That velvety vamp who purred "thunder only happens when it's raining" has become a songstress wise, rueful, and sometimes breathtaking -- truly the poet goddess that her fans have known her to be all along.

It turns out that the best thing to happen to that voice since Lindsay Buckingham first disappointed its vessel is Dave Stewart. As producer for In Your Dreams Stewart, who knows something about how to weave hypnotic sounds as settings for glorious female voices, performs his duties not as ringmaster but as partner. He gives the diva plenty of room to strut her stuff but doesn't let her caprices take over. One speculates that this was some of the secret to Stewart's success with Annie Lennox, and one wonders what might have happened had Jimmy Iovine taken the approach thirty years ago with Stevie Nicks.

For Nicks. Stewart crafts soundscapes that are lush and rhythmic, often with a guitar-driven twang that underscores the country roots she has always claimed. Secret Love -- a track that Nicks has been hoarding since the Rumours sessions -- bubbles along on delicious interplay between Nicks' shimmering voice and a Mac-influenced rhythm track, while Annabel Lee offers a climactic, bass-driven tale based on Poe. Either cut is exemplary; just exactly what we want from Stevie Nicks. Requisite tales of a different past have a solid presence in Ghosts are Gone and For What It's Worth. However, the album's showstopper is Soldier's Angel. Against chiming guitar, Nicks, her voice at its barest and most harmonic, intones a threnody as the angel, mother, girlfriend, nurse of soldiers everywhere. It's a gorgeous, powerful cut, whose drama is in its simplicity, and whose beauty is the deep truth of mourning.

The poetry of loss infuses In Your Dreams -- sometimes directly, often slyly -- and with such a rich vein to draw from, some will question how any artist who taps into that could fail, perhaps hoping to minimize the accomplishment. But such a criticism is not the only thing Nicks has weathered in her life, and that knowing is the secret of her success not just commercially but artistically. Nicks is directly in line to the throne of rock royalty from a time when rock was truly classic. How can anyone argue with a self-proclaimed "rock and roll woman" whose spirit is demonstrably descended from Janis Joplin? In Your Dreams may not be Nicks' most historical album -- that distinction belongs, probably irretrievably, to Belladonna -- but as the musician who exceeds the icon, it is, so far, her best.