Stanzas don’t hang together, and choruses verge on the utterly meaningless: “If anyone falls in love/Somewhere, twilight, dreamtime, somewhere/In the back of your mind/If anyone falls,” offers one particularly pellucid example in “If Anyone Falls.” “There is a gate/It can be guarded/Well, it is not heaven/It has a garden/So to the red rose goes the passion” begins the inexplicable “Gate and Garden.” Emotions flit through these songs like Hades’ shades–shapeless forms, unable to escape. It’s hard to believe that the woman nominally responsible for such fine pieces of songcraft as “I Don’t Want to Know” or even “Edge of Seventeen” could have concocted the inchoate ramblings that pervade this record. So the question is, how did it all turn out so badly? Let’s not mince words: much of The Wild Heart is an outright catastrophe, a one-two punch of cracked-cookie lyrics and stunningly pedestrian music. And Nicks embarks on her second solo LP with some intriguing personal history to relate: she’s a married woman now, wedded to her best friend’s widower, stepmother to an infant daughter. The Wild Heart boasts one of the best producers in the business in Jimmy Iovine (reprising his yeoman board chores on Bella Donna), and at least two of rock & roll’s most valuable players, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and keyboardist Roy Bittan. Her distinctive lower-range growl has broadened and strengthened considerably it may not be a bluesmama instrument, but it carries some emotional oomph when it gets cranked up.
Seldom has Stevie Nicks been in better voice than on The Wild Heart.
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