If you've read anything about Stevie Nicks's new album, you've likely seen her odd admission that the first single, "Secret Love," was written in 1976 about an unspecified dalliance on her first Fleetwood Mac tour. Her bringing this up is probably less about settling old romantic scores than about reminding you how much you loved Nicks back then. Fittingly, In Your Dreams — which sequences the Mac-worthy "Secret Love" before an obvious "Landslide" cop, "For What It's Worth" — is her first solo album to go for that vintage band sound instead of a slicked-up radio sound. Main collaborator Dave Stewart isn't Lindsey Buckingham, but he knows his way around guitar pop, and his main accomplishment here is keeping the arrangements tight, the sonics fairly organic, and the tempo varied. Nicks and Stewart come up with a strong batch of songs (if not quite as strong as her half of Mac's Say You Will), and her voice has lost the worn-out quality of recent decades (though gained a bit of probable Pro-Tooling). And in the end, there's enough warmth and witchy allure to make this her best solo disc since Bella Donna.
