Stones bang out a winner

Pre-release buzz suggested that the Rolling Stones' new CD would be its best in decades. It is.

BY HOWARD COHEN

hcohen@herald.com


THE ROLLING STONES

A Bigger Bang

Virgin

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With the release today of A Bigger Bang, The Rolling Stones' first all-new CD in eight years, Mick Jagger and cohorts once again threaten to live up to their self-billed title as The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

No, really.

We understand the skepticism. It's been a long time since the Stones released a CD that mattered. A Bigger Bang is the Stones' leanest and meanest album since 1981's Tattoo You and, song-for-song, it's actually a more cohesive project than that patchwork LP was.

The Stones expose their raunchy roots right from the opening Rough Justice, the set's most immediately infectious rocker. With lust and snarl in his delivery, Jagger growls, ``One time you were my baby chicken / Now you've grown into a fox .''

It's the Stones as we remember them and have missed but the track designed to get the most attention is Sweet Neo-Con, the group's most explicitly political song to date, a blistering, not so-veiled attack on the Bush administration.

''You call yourself a Christian / I think that you're a hypocrite,'' Jagger spits, over-enunciating ''Chris-t-ian'' and ''hyp-o-crite.'' Though President Bush is never name-checked Jagger's target is rather obvious. ``You say you are a patriot / I think that you're a crock of . . .''

You can fill in the blank. Suffice to say, this tune won't pop up on the First iPod but for the many who are watching their wallets grow slimmer than Nicole Richie, lines like ''I love gasoline / I drink it everyday / But it's getting very pricey / And who is gonna pay?'' feel prescient.

With the Stones' last few albums -- competent, if ultimately forgettable releases like Voodoo Lounge (1994) and Bridges to Babylon (1997) -- the biggest controversy centered around the group's concert ticket prices and late-night comics' snotty comments about their age. Nice to see the controversy once again focusing on the band's lyrical content.

Musically, pared back on several tracks to just the sole remaining originals of Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, the Stones aim for the diversity of their best work and almost nail it. Back of My Hand is a rusty blues workout, all exposed edges, akin to their earliest '60s recordings. The funk of Rain Fall Down could be lifted off the 1976 Black and Blue LP. Ditto the ballad Streets of Love. Here's an apologetic Jagger, the notorious womanizer, at his most repentant. ``I must admit, I was awful bad.''

That's not to say A Bigger Bang is a great album the way, say, Exile on Main St., Some Girls, Beggars Banquet or Sticky Fingers were. The Stones rock with as much fire as any younger band, but the CD lacks what they used to call ''The Single.'' A lot of good songs here, though none that will rank as classics.

Still, A Bigger Bang's energy and attitude is precisely the kind of album the Stones needed to make at this point -- one that should silence the critics and remind fans how life-affirming well-played rock and roll can be.

Pod Picks: Rough Justice, Sweet Neo-Con, Look What the Cat Dragged In.