Blasphemy
Date: February 11, 2006 22:18
ABB
Eight years on from Bridges to Babylon, the longest ever gap between studio releases, one question begs to be asked: Does anybody really need a new Rolling Stones album? If they do, they deserve something better than this.
For the best part of a quarter of a century now, the Stones have been not so much a band as a brand. Calendar-filling satdium tours followed by souvenir live records (and more recently DVDs) have kept them in the public eye, but they've arguably not given us a solitary song worthy of critical discussion since Undercover Of The Night.
Sadly, they remain convinced the people are all too eager to embrace new material, to the point that one-fifth of the much-hyped Forty Licks compilation comprised totally forgettable post 1990 offerings-at the expense of big hits like We Love You and Little Red Rooster, the latter one of their first chart-toppers.
A BB reaches us at the start of another global jaunt, and it is a safe bet that only one or two of it's 16 songs will feature when the live circus reaches UK shores next summer. Yes, the group wisely stick to the classics for the stage shows, so why even bother attempting to come up with something fresh and relevant
on record, when they're so clearly out of step with any developments in popular music in modern times.
It's not as if the chief writers have listened to, or taken in anything by the young turks of the last two decades. Ironically, the most blatant examples of Jagger & Richards being inspired by others come when they appropriate the styles of acts who themselves borrowed liberally from the Stones in the first place. Look What The Cat Dragged In shamelessly nicks the guitar riff from INXS' Need You Tonight, Biggest Mistake would sound at home on Steve Earls's first couple of albums, and Streets of Love is a lame attempt at a lighter-lofting anthemic U2
ballad.
There's a serious tedious seriousness to much of the album, as if the Stones feel they have a valid statement or two to make about the world situation.
Back in 1978, a song like Respectable was a witty , self-mocking critique of US presidential politics (supposedly inspired by Bianca Jagger's 'frienship' with Gerald Ford's son Jack). Here the clumsily titled Sweet Neo Con is a misfiring broadside at the Bush administration, which, although Jagger claims is not directed personally at Dubya, nonetheless makes reference to vice prez Dick Cheney's old firm Haliburton. Sorry, chaps, but rhyming 'hypocrite' with'crock of shit' is hardly piercing social comment.
When Richards goes for the funny bone it's extraordinarly weak. The closing Infamy appears to have been written solely to revive the corny Kenneth Williams line from Carry On Cleo (as in' they've all got it...'); mildly amusing in isolation, perhaps, but not when repeated a dozen times over four minutes.
The stripped-down blues chug of Back Of My Hand salvages something from the proceedings, as does the holler and strut of She Saw Me Coming, but they're the exceptions in a set of songs as predictable , pedestrian and pointless as the feeblest inclusions on Dirty Work, Steel Wheels or Voodoo Lounge.
In keeping with the inevitable security surrounding big-name releases these days, the PC -unfriendly encrypted advance copy of the album arrived at the RC office purporting to be a band calling themselves The Little Wonders. Taking it's title into account , The Little Wimpers might have been more apt.
Record Collector NO: 316
I say blasphemy. What say you?