A Bigger Bang
From AwardAnnals
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| Artist(s) | The Rolling Stones |
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| Label | Virgin Records |
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| It should come as no surprise that it took sex, disease and death to shake the Rolling Stones out of their latest creative dry spell. Leading up to the making of A Bigger Bang, produced by Don Was, Mick Jagger endured a very public break-up with Jerry Hall, Charlie Watts battled throat cancer, and Ron Wood was devastated by the news of his ex-wife’s suicide. Out of their collective struggles, the members of the venerable British rock band managed to piece together some of their best work in nearly two decades. It’s a slick, slightly uneven affair bounding… | |
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It should come as no surprise that it took sex, disease and death to shake the Rolling Stones out of their latest creative dry spell. Leading up to the making of A Bigger Bang, produced by Don Was, Mick Jagger endured a very public break-up with Jerry Hall, Charlie Watts battled throat cancer, and Ron Wood was devastated by the news of his ex-wife’s suicide. Out of their collective struggles, the members of the venerable British rock band managed to piece together some of their best work in nearly two decades. It’s a slick, slightly uneven affair bounding from raunchy blues to MOR rock songs that sound suspiciously like they were left over from the Alfie soundtrack, yes, but it also sounds vital at every turn. Even though they don’t really need to, the jet-set vagabond rockers plunge into hot-button politics (“Sweet Neo Con”), rummage through their dirty laundry (“Oh No, Not You Again”) and dip cautious toes back into ridicule-tempting “Miss You”-style funk (“Rain Fall Down”), without making any major missteps unless you count the ewwwww-factor of a 61-year-old Keith Richards singing “Come on honey, bare your breasts and make me feel at home” on “This Place Is Empty.” —Aidin Vaziri
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A Bigger Bang—the Rolling Stones’ 25th studio album—begins exactly how Rolling Stones albums ought to begin, with the testosterone calling-card explosion of “Rough Justice”; a ribald, licentious rocker with Sir Mick getting bawdy and with Keith Richard’s infernal bottleneck guitar sliding around like an aroused python on an oil slick. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day.
Venerable rock aristocrats they may be but beneath the wrinkles and erudition throbs the passion of reckless, raffish young dandies whose loins cannot be encumbered by codpieces. It’s to the Stones credit that (knighthoods aside) they can still sound like the sort of chaps you wouldn’t want hanging around your daughter. Jagger sounds fantastic; tawdry, bitchy and condescending on stompers like “Look What The Cat Dragged In” and like a dumped mug on the jilted love tale of “She Saw Me Coming”.
At sixteen tracks the album is long and not entirely without its shortcomings—”Sweet Neo Con” won’t have George W Bush choking on any pretzels and “Driving Too Fast” sounds like a cross between “Jumping Jack Flash” and a lecture in road safety. But there are strong ballads (“Streets of Love”) vintage malt blues (“Back of My Hand”) and even Keith resurrecting one of Kenneth William’s finest wordplays on “Infamy”. Best Stones album in yonks? Quite possibly so. —Kevin Maidment
