Re: ABB - another take
Date: October 28, 2005 12:55
It's a good album album overall, probably the best since Undercover. In fact some of the songs could be put into Undercover (Look...Cat being one of them). I still think the production or the mixing is a bit annoying: I find the drums too upfront, as if the album had to rock by a hard drumming style. And I find the vocals a bit too upfront in some songs, too.
One of the songs I like most is Driving Too Fast: a simple, standard uptempo song, but Jagger sings the way I like: sleazy, not vocalising (sp?) very well, a little bit growling. And the music is pure groove... Look What The Cat is another gem for me, really like Ronnie's work on this. LINearlyDie features one of the best vocals by Mick since a long time ago. Rough Justice epitomizes (sp?) what the Stones sound is, with Mick singing how he should. She Saw Me Coming is pure musical fun, I like it a lot, too. Rain Fell Down has a nice groove too, and its bridge reminds me of Dance.
About It Won't Take Long, I don't understand why it seems to be liked so much: to me it's the Stones trying to sound as the Stones, and that's all: pure filler. I prefer Dangerous Beauty way better. Biggest Mistake could be a very good country-like song, with a catchy chorus if those poor and embarassing wooo-wooo-wooo vocal parts at the intro and bridge were erased or changed by any instrumental bridge (a pedal steel, perhaps?)
About the Keef's songs: TPIEmpty is a very good song in the tradition of his ballads, reminding me of All About You, but it suffers of having Keith whispering so near into your ears as if you were sleeping with him, and his breathe stinks. Why the @#$%& didn't they put the mic a little bit away???. Infamy: to me is pure filler. To do a good song with three chords, like Gimme Shelter, it has to have way more details than this one, which seems way too unfinished.
I really miss Ronnie's playing on many songs, where it seems he only added some fills here and there and Mieck seems to carry the song with his guitar.
But overall, better than I expected. I'm one of those who think the album would have been stronger if it was only a 12 tracks album, but...
By Stones standards: about 6.5-7 out of 10
[There'll be no wedding today...]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-10-28 12:57 by bruno.