Stevie Nicks - Rock a Little [2LP]

Rock a Little is Stevie Nicks at her most extravagant, a gleaming mid-eighties pop record presented here as a 180-gram double LP.

Her third solo album arrived in 1985 while Fleetwood Mac sat on a long break, and she poured everything into it. The sessions passed through several hands, with Jimmy Iovine, Rick Nowels, Keith Olsen and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell all helping shape the sound, and the result is lush and shimmering, full of booming drums, glossy synths and that unmistakable voice cutting through the haze.

I Can't Wait opens the album with a pulsing, nervy urgency that still sounds thrilling on a big system. Talk to Me, written by Chas Sandford, became one of the biggest hits of her solo career, all yearning and neon. Imperial Hotel, co-written with Campbell, swaggers with a little Tom Petty grit, and The Nightmare drifts somewhere darker and more dreamlike, closer to the witchy Stevie fans adore.

Critics at the time weren't sure what to make of all that gloss, but the songs have aged into fan favorites, the kind that reward a fresh listen with headphones and the lights turned low.

Spread across two discs of heavy vinyl, it's a chance to hear every layer of Nicks's most opulent era.