There were a lot of things going on with Tusk, most notoriously the final unwinding of the twist-tie romances between the band members. As a band, Fleetwood Mac was ripe for this: the most Frankensteinish of groups, in the late-60s they were a London blues band who made their mark with an instrumental (“Albatross”, #1 in the UK) but by the late-70s had wholly reconfigured based on two new hires: the Los Angeles chanteurs Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. This schizophrenia seems like it was the source for a lot of deeply-plumbed pop, since they managed to consistently meld their highly different styles into discernible, if often rather idiosyncratic, songs. Tusk in particular was the moment Lindsey Buckingham emerged as the singularly perfect talent for chaining all these links. Following the huge success of Rumours, he was permitted unlimited expenses and maneuvered into position to oversee the project without intervention. The result was a double-album littered with top-tier radio pop, recorded in constantly-changing, lo-fi arrangements. The production cost ran into the millions, and the sessions are said to have dragged on with a single-mindedness recalling Brian Wilson.

The cover of Tusk mirrors that shift of emphasis. On the previous two records in the band’s Buckingham/Nicks-era — their second eponymous record, and Rumours, — members are portraited in Renn Faire, underneath spidery, awkwardly-ornate lettering; those LPs contained consistent, crisply recorded three-and-a-half minute AM favorites like “Go Your Own Way” and “Rhiannon.” The front of Tusk is sparse and balanced — a mélange textile coloration with some tone-on-tone capitals for the band name, and scattered darkened patches, like the remnants of adhesive after tape is ripped off, and then that unplaceable Polaroid. Its precise typesetting and modulating but irregular color has a disorienting cleanliness that could just as easily describe Buckingham’s production. On “Save Me A Place,” for example, his yearning ballad is recorded through a pristine vintage condenser microphone and paired with a rhythm track of a box of two-inch tape struck by hand. Elsewhere, parallel drum tracks are panned to opposite ends of the mix; tape is sped up, looped; double-tracked guitars clash on overdubs; and five vocals recorded in Buckingham’s bathroom, on his knees, make the final cut. And then there’s a marching band.

In place of the stagey, black-and-white backdrop costume shots on the previous record, the back of an import version of Tusk has only a candid of the band laughing uncomfortably. (The Vigon/Nahas/Vigon team was nominated for a 1981 Grammy Award for the packaging, but lost to a brick of mild cheddar by Roy Kohara.)