The original bad-boy band is once again hot stuff.
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

A Bigger Bang boils the Stones down to their scrappy and earthy essence.

And not just on the concert trail. The Rolling Stones have been playing with fire in the studio.

Recognized as the world's leading musical box-office draw, the Stones haven't generated similar stampedes for new recordings in the past decade or two. Their last No. 1 album was Tattoo You in 1981.

Fans seem content sweating to the oldies, and critics routinely trot out the canard that the band has lost the hustle and hunger that built its classics.

Get ready for some jumping jacked-up flashbacks. A Bigger Bang (* * * ½ out of four) arrives today as a jolting reminder of the iconic British rock band's indestructible chemistry and primitive instincts. (Note: Our weekly collection of album reviews, Listen Up, will run in Wednesday's edition)

Bang, recorded in Paris and mixed in Los Angeles with Don Was co-producing, boils the Stones down to their scrappy and earthy essence, without the techno-frills and interlopers that diversified past efforts but also camouflaged the band's natural assets. Stripping down the sound pumps grit and immediacy into the thumping grooves, nasty riffs and sly vocals.

Bang finds singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards in peak form again. Their collaboration yields tunes steeped in rock and blues roots but not mired in the past. It's a mature record, yet it retains the Stones' signature swagger and defiance. And it may be their most topically diverse and emotionally honest album to date.

The first surprise is Sweet Neo-Con, Jagger's swipe at U.S. foreign policy. On the socio-political front, he also examines urban decay in the funk-shaded Rain Fall Down and snarls in Dangerous Beauty at a female torturer who is "painfully shamefully doing ya duty." The details evoke Abu Ghraib.

Jagger's strongest vocals and lyrics focus on romantic obsession, missteps and betrayal. He's stung by loss and remorse in the aching Streets of Love and plagued by suspicion in the country-hued Let Me Down Slow. The Biggest Mistake deals with the regret of mishandling a soul mate: "I acted impatient, acted unkind/I took her for granted, I played with her mind."

Jagger's spunk returns in Back of My Hand, a raw, harmonica-soaked blues tune haunted by fever-dream lyrics, and Oh No, Not You Again and Look What the Cat Dragged In, both propelled by unbridled cheek.

Richards submits lead vocals on a pair of charmers, the rickety piano ballad This Place Is Empty and sweet-and-sour Infamy.

There's not a clunker in the bunch. At 16 tracks, A Bigger Bang is the band's longest studio album since 1972's Exile on Main Street. It's unfair to expect the Stones, or any band, to match the brilliance of that landmark, but they've certainly found their way back inside Main Street's ZIP code. And compared with most rock records falling off the assembly line today, Bigger is better.


Pretty accurate, I'd say, except I think there is one clunker on there, the "awful bad' Streets of Love.