Their Best Since Hackney Diamonds and Better Than That
The reference material says Foreign Tongues is the Rolling Stones 25th studio album. Is that all? Seems like it should be closer to 50, to which it is close if you counted compilations and live albums.
To play with a familiar Rolling Stones commentary meme, “this is the best Stones album since…” I will play it safe and say it is their best album since Hackney Diamonds. Which was their last album, released in October, 2023. That album emphasized the “hack” in Hackney; I don’t remember a song from that record, but I do remember a video in which they cruise through Hollywood in a convertible, with girls young enough to be their granddaughters in skimpy bathing suits. They were in denial about their ages. Much of this music was drawn from those sessions, but it sounds as if they came back to them and worked to improve them. The cover art, a mashup of Mick, Keith, and Ron as creaky old men, is horrible.
But with the music and words they more often act their ages, which gives the album a touch of authentic defiance lacking in decades of recent Stones albums. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both 82 years old; Ron Wood is 79. They are the only current members of the Rolling Stones. Consider the irony of “Side Effects”: it’s not “anti-drug” exactly, but it acknowledges the mood changes and physical effects of years of substance abuse. In an interview with David Marchese of The New York Times Magazine, Jagger said there wasn’t a thing good about getting older. And if Jagger says that, imagine how the rest of us feel?
Longtime recording and touring members Steve Jordan (drums), Darryl Jones (bass), and pianist Matt Clifford are loyal and presumably well-paid accompanists, but do not wear the badge of “Rolling Stones.”
Producer Andrew Watt, perhaps becoming the Rick Rubin of a new generation, plays guitar and other instruments, adding his part to what is at least a four-guitar attack: Not just Richards and Wood on guitars, but Jagger on electric and acoustic guitars. You will note the credits also include Rolling Stones founding drummer Charlie Watts, who died at age 80 on August 24, 2021.
It is possible that Watts rose from the dead, or has just been gigging with Bird or Diz on the 52nd Street of the afterlife. Watts plays drums on a cut called “Hit Me in the Head,” recorded in 2021 during sessions in Los Angeles. “Hit Me in the Head” is the shortest track – just under three minutes on a record some may find a little bloated at 14 songs just over 63 minutes – but this is as close as the Stones have come to writing their own Ramones song, though they mess it up slightly with the Jagger-Richards songwriting team’s proclivity for composing tunes with verses, bridges, and choruses – complete, conventional songs. As Don DeLillo wrote in Americana, “it takes centuries to invent the primitive,” and it sounds swell for the Stones to revert to the primitive on “Hit Me in the Head.”
Producer Watt is hardly a primitivist: His other multitude of production credits include Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. And the Stones go with his “Big Bang” theory, or perhaps I should say, A Bigger Bang, the title of the Stones’ 2005 album, which was not as good or interesting as Foreign Tongues.
In the manner of recording artists today, there are multiple “features,” or guest performers: You’ll note credits for Robert Smith of the Cure; Steve Winwood (playing organ and pianos on a bunch of tracks); Bruno Mars (cowbell on “Never Wanna Lose You”); Paul McCartney (bass on “Covered in You”).
Trust me, you won’t notice their presence in the mixes. Unless you go listening for Mars’ cowbell. The tracks are stacked like one of those Beyoncé songs with 24 songwriters. It’s a tower of sound that works for me because the songs work, and Jagger’s voice, still prime in his 80s, cuts through and sings like he cares. To a point: the swing and sway of Mick’s often-heard harmonica sounds filtered through the Large Hadron Collider, atomized by particle physics.
The opening track, “Rough and Twisted” (perhaps because “Rough and Rowdy Ways” was taken), is definitely “R&T,” as in “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” a trace of the old Muddy Waters roots on the Stones, but of course it’s a “new” song.
Mick’s falsetto is unexpectedly strong on “Jealous Lover,” a little bit of soul in the region somewhere between the Delfonics and the Impressions.
Jagger seems to have fun with his image on “Mr. Charm,” which namechecks “mad mogul Musk” but is certainly not about him, as one review I speed-scanned through may have suggested. Viewers of the lyric video on YouTube thought “Mr. Charm” sounded like “Monkey Man” or “Shattered” and they’re not far off. And “In the Stars,” a good old propulsive rocker that misses Charlie Watts’ restraint, has a video that a friend of mine dared me to watch. I watched, didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until the third viewing that I realized AI recreations proliferated, and that Mick and Ronnie each looked 40 years younger. I think the idea repulsed Keith, who can hardly be seen.
“Ringing Hollow,” a kind of country hangover from the Gram Parsons era, does get as topical as the Stones get, lamenting the “scowl” on the face of the Statue of Liberty.
Keith’s song, “Some of Us,” is as empathetic and humble as I had always found him in interviews. “Some of us are on our knees,” he sings in this lamentation, pleading on behalf of those who need somebody to love.
The two covers are interesting selections. Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good,” is also a lamentation. They had liked her music. I think I read that Keith, of all people (being the best person, from experience), wished he had been around to help Winehouse ease up on the vodka before she drank herself to death in 2011 at age 27. The dead-at-27-club may have been started by Stones co-founder Brian Jones died in July 1969, drowned in his swimming pool. Jones had been kicked out of the band because his drinking and drugging had made him such a liability.
The closing song is a version of Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah,” and it’s counter-intuitive. The Stones were born and bred on Chuck Berry covers. But there’s no Berry guitar or Johnny Johnson piano. Instead, it’s a country blues, like another Stones favorite, Slim Harpo, or Lightnin’ Hopkins, on Adderall. Prescription drugs have their side effects too. But the Rolling Stones seem to be delighted to be alive, and still be the Rolling Stones. It’s a wonderful life.
This article is reprinted from Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins writes the Critical Conditions Substack: https://waynerobins.substack.com/.
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