It’s so strange to think that by the time the Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac began, the group had already recorded nine albums. Fleetwood Mac had always been a sort of amorphous collective that placed little importance on the lead singer in question, which isn’t surprising, considering the group’s very name was derived from the members of the rhythm section.

But here, with the addition of Buckingham and Nicks, the power of the frontmen begin to match the chops of the musicians that had always played masterfully behind (or despite) them.

Granted, the two freshman hadn’t yet taken hold of the authority within their grasp–Nicks wrote only three of the eleven songs, Buckingham only two and one he cowrote with Christine McVie, the only remaining vocalist from the previous incarnation.

Here in this betweenness, McVie truly shines. She is freed from Bob Welch’s shadow in the wake of his leaving, and Stevie and Lindsey hadn’t grown tall enough to darken her with theirs. So fully illumined, McVie writes and leads half of the album’s material, like the excellent dream-blues of Warm Ways, the rollicking Over My Head, and the banjo-backed Say You Love Me. And while the album may not have spawned the sheer amount of hits for Stevie Nicks as Rumours would, the two songs she sings here, Rhiannon and Landslide, are two of her most celebrated Fleetwood Mac numbers.

Only Buckingham falls flat–Crystals is a beautiful piece, but Stevie wrote it for him. Besides the dusty blues rocker World Turning, cowrote with McVie, not many of his contributions are very memorable. They’re not bad necessarily–but by the time Warm Ways came on (the second track), I had already forgotten the tune to opener Monday Morning. The menacing closer, I’m So Afraid, has more shades of the Rumours classics to come than anything he else he does, with its twin guitar lines, pounding bass, and fragile delivery. But in all, any feelings that this White Album is the prequel to their masterpiece are tragically under-informed. Fleetwood Mac is a fantastic reintroduction and a great debut by one of the greatest lineups in rock and roll history.