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RPO: Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Album Review

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours

Symphonic Rock
4.0/5.0

Website (Label)
Purple Pyramid Records
by Craig Hartranft,  08.14.2013

Here seems an odd pitch from Purple Pyramid Records to Dangerdog Music Reviews: England's Royal Philharmonic Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Although, I guess it's not all that strange. The RPO, like many other orchestras, have put their collective hands and instruments to recording symphonic arrangements of popular music, if anything to raise money to support themselves. In the past, The RPO has played every thing from Abba and Green Day to Rush and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Photo

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: that's everyone.

Now they tackle possibly the most popular and famous Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours. If you're thinking something akin to Metallica's S&M, where the band actually performed with an orchestra, you would bewrong. This is basically the songs arranged for the orchestra, principally by James Graydon and Richard Cottle (the well-known producer, I'm guessing), to a totally instrumental score. The compositions are helped by some additional guitars, including pedal steel, and a rhythm section known as The Hooligans.

The trick, obviously, with making a symphonic rock effort of a popular rock song or album is making sure the natural melody is not altered or submerged in the arrangement or recording. When you listen to Second Hand News, Go Your Own Way, or The Chain, you want to recognize the tune no matter how much it's embellished by the orchestra. RPO does a very good job getting this simple principal right.

Mostly, the entire recording features the orchestra symphonic take on the songs. Sometimes it's a little peculiar, like the almost circus feeling of Don't Stop. Sometimes they push the rock angle with a guitar solo at the end of Second Hand News or Gold Dust Woman. The latter performed by Peter Frampton. Another time RPO throws you a curve by making You Make Loving Fun sound both symphonic and country with the addition of a pedal steel guitar solo from Sarah Jory.

There are some people who simply cannot stand for another entity other than the band doing their own music, especially in a different format, and they will probably hate this. But if you like the idea of melding rock with symphonic music (there's not that huge of gap between the two), then you'll likely enjoy this. Recommended.




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In Short

The title says it all: Royal Philharmonic Plays Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. The most famous album given to a symphony orchestra, with maybe a few twists.

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