For as long as she’s been draping ribboned scarves over her microphone stand, Stevie Nicks has trafficked in verbs, not attributes. Actions, not texts. She rasps, she enchants, she twirls and she mystifies.
Even at 77, she manages to harness the serene blend of gentle lilt and witchy wonder that has made her one of the most revered performers of the last half-century.
Still, her 14-song Saturday night jaunt at Scotiabank Arena — the rescheduled seventh-to-last stop on her North American tour — was a mixed bag, blending solo highlights with somewhat underwhelming renditions of all-time classics.
“Yes, me and my barely-coming-back-together shoulder are here to see you tonight,” she said, alluding to the reason for having to postpone the gig in the first place.
Going back to her days as an angelic California rock heroine, Nicks’ vocals have oscillated carefully between two distinct shades: girlishly tender and huskily gravelly. She could be as light as Joni or as gritty as Joplin, embodying each tonal chassis with ease and comfort depending on the mood.
Now, all that remains is the thin version of the latter, which works well on some reworked classics (“Gypsy,” “Stand Back”), but falls flat on others (“Bella Donna,” “If Anyone Falls”), giving her limited set list a bit of an uneven feel.
Fleetwood Mac fans, luckily, were well-served by the breadth of nostalgic material, even if the quality of those arrangements was subpar when compared to their full-band contemporaries. “Gold Dust Woman” shimmered with sorcery despite its attempted rework into a thumping, glitzy arena rocker, while “Rhiannon” and “Dreams” remain the classics they always were. As a tear-jerking closer, “Landslide” is as pertinent as ever, with Nicks’ more mature, almost owlish delivery elevating what was already a lyrical triumph to an eternal opus.
But there’s an almost intangible magnetism missing from them when performed outside the charged, visceral confines of a Fleetwood Mac performance. Her band, captained by longtime lead guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel (James Taylor, Warren Zevon) and garnished by vocal deputy Sharon Celani, do a fine job backing up Nicks’ vocals, but they’re a far cry from the chemistry, rawness and subtle finesse of Nicks’ erstwhile Mac bandmates.
Some of her solo cuts, though, still sound great. “Edge of Seventeen” is ever the showstopper, especially in its extended form, while “Outside the Rain” glistens with her trademark marvellous poise. She even threw in a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” for good measure, complete with a wistful slide show of pictures of the two from tours and songwriting sessions past.
As she’ll likely be the first to tell you, Nicks does little in the way of stage antics or quirks, perhaps in part due to her recent injury; she’ll sway, do a spin or two and mimic an electric guitar during a crunchy riff, but nothing that compares to her majestic stagecraft of old.
But she partially mitigated her lack of mobility (and available, famed duet partners) with charming, albeit wordy stories of her globe-trotting past, lending an underlying grace to her presence. Whether she’s waltzing through poetic stanzas or wrapping herself in coloured capes, she is, unmistakably, still Stevie Nicks.
“Keep dancing,” she encouraged, before shifting to a decidedly goofier anecdote in her closing message. “In the middle of the night, when I get up and go to the kitchen, I dance all the way there and all the way back, and I love it!”
She doesn’t move mountains like she used to, but for the misty mass of flowy skirt-and-shawl-wearing acolytes of all ages, Nicks is still kicking, with a childlike attitude and the same delicate get-up to boot. And with a career this rich and filled with gauzy mythology, that’s enough.
