The Rolling Stones – Foreign Tongues
Some bands should have retired long ago after sixty years. The Rolling Stones laugh heartily at that. On 10 July, ‘Foreign Tongues’, their twenty-fifth studio album, will be released, and the band that once turned the world upside down with ‘Satisfaction’ proves that age is mainly just a number as long as Keith Richards can still hold a guitar.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood returned to producer Andrew Watt after the success of ‘Hackney Diamonds’ from 2023, the man who has by now taken on half of the music industry, from Ozzy Osbourne to Post Malone. The sessions took place at Metropolis Studios in London in less than a month, which immediately explains why this album sounds as if it was recorded yesterday rather than swallowed up by an endless production process. Particularly notable is the presence of Charlie Watts, who plays posthumously on a track built around one of his final recordings before he died in 2021. Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Robert Smith of The Cure and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers also entered the studio, although it remains the question whether everyone can actually be heard through all the noise.
Opening track ‘Rough and Twisted’ grabs you by the collar immediately: two guitarists playing each other out of the room, exactly as you would expect from these men. ‘In The Stars’ nods to the dark atmosphere of ‘Gimme Shelter’, with Jagger talking about a disease in the country before he still shouts that you have to dance until the roof collapses. Typical Stones, that combination of gloom and desire to celebrate. ‘Ringing Hollow’ is a country swinger that shows the band in relaxed mode, while Richards himself takes the lead on ‘Some Of Us’, a song in which his voice may no longer sound smooth, but it does sound sincere. ‘Back In Your Life’ is the moment when Ronnie Wood completely lets himself go, with an ending solo that puts the album on edge. And then there is that cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Beautiful Delilah’ as the closing track, a nod to their own beginnings, when they were still a bunch of young lads trying to imitate the blues in London pubs.
Not everything convinces. Watt sometimes pushes the production too heavily, with guest appearances that seem to have been invited more for the PR copy than to actually add something. Steve Winwood is announced but barely heard, and the political jabs Jagger takes at modern rulers sometimes feel more forced than his old street-fighter lyrics. But these are small drawbacks on an album that above all shows that these three men are still enjoying what they do.
‘Foreign Tongues’ is not a reinvention, and it does not need to be. It is a band that knows exactly what a Stones album should sound like, and simply comes to prove it once again. Whether this will be their final album, they do not know themselves either. Should that be the case, then this is a worthy farewell. (8/10) (Polydor)
