Listening to Foreign Tongues – the band’s 25th studio album, and only their third album of original material in the 21st century – you wonder whether rock gods who want to keep plying their trade into old age might just deserve some sympathy too.
New work by any artist who has achieved genuinely legendary stature is doomed to be judged not only against what is happening now, but also their younger, leaner, hungrier selves. As such, Foreign Tongues will inevitably be compared to (unfavourably, equally inevitably) such unfathomably flawless and enduring masterpieces as Sticky Fingers (1971) and Let It Bleed (1969), records that have become benchmarks against which anyone who wishes to evoke the swagger and innovation that marked the long-gone era when the joyously one-dimensional sass of early rock & roll was rendered to the more ambitious values of what’s now recognised as ‘classic rock’.
Approached on its own terms, free of the overbearing weight of the band’s past triumphs, Foreign Tongues turns out to be not that much short of a certified gas, gas, gas. For starters, the core trio of Mick Jagger (soon to be 83), Keith Richards (82) and Ronnie Wood (a mere pup at 79) exude the unmistakable joy of playing together. These are musicians who have had every opportunity to arrive at an impasse where being in the same room at the same time is intolerable, but the highlights – and there are quite a few – virtually sizzle with the untethered energy of a rock and roll band hitting a juicy communal groove, eyeball to eyeball. Regularly enlivening the proceedings with grittily wailing blues harp, Jagger especially is on fierce form: the lithe falsetto on the disco-hued charmer “Jealous Lover” could have conceivably been teleported in from the 1978 session where the track’s cousin “Miss You” was recorded.
The references to the turmoil and madness of today ("there’s another scoundrel trying to whip up the crowd" is a veiled reference to the populist snake-oil of Trump, Farage et al, whilst "that mad mogul Musk" doesn’t even bother to disguise the villain) suit the occasion better than the stale leftovers of the surly attitude of the Stones’ mid-60s pop peak (present here in the adrenalised burst of “Hit Me In The Head”, featuring fellow octogenarian rock royalty Paul McCartney on fuzz bass, and built around a drum track Charlie Watts recorded before his passing in 2021) that characterised 2023’s Hackney Diamonds.
The first half of the album offers convincingly updated interpretations of the key Rolling Stones templates: rough and rowdy blues, manure-flecked country balladry, excursions into the borderlands of rock and soul, boisterous boogie, hook-laden riff missiles. At 14 tracks, Foreign Tongues is almost as long as 1972’s fabled double LP Exile On Main Street (perhaps the band’s definitive statement) and it can’t sustain this kind of propulsive momentum for an hour without resorting to some unnecessary idling. The radio-friendly sheen applied by star producer Andrew Watt can’t be addressed via a judicious needle skip, however. Throughout, Watt’s production dulls the sharp edges, including occasionally putting a damper on the gloriously ramshackle interplay between the guitars of Richards and Wood. On “In The Stars”, the contrast between the painstakingly layered polish and the gnarly weaving of the sharp-fanged guitars actually elevates the effortlessly anthemic tune, but elsewhere the excessively busy mix can treat the guitars – ultimately the band’s alchemic core – like eccentric uncles at a flashy wedding, invited, yes, but strategically seated at a remote table.
Thankfully, two quieter highlights are allowed to breathe and cultivate the fertile spaces between the notes. “Ringing Hollow” is a genuinely stirring countryfied ode to the formative influence of the US on the band, countering the nostalgia (‘’I watched your movies/I smoked your cigarettes’’) by honing in on the decline of America’s allure in more recent years, whilst the humbly soaring “Some Of Us” – with Richards on lead vocals that make a virtue of road-weary wear and tear – excels in the kind of wounded vulnerability that the Stones aren’t usually renowned for. This isn’t really a band you book for reflection, but Jagger and Richards’s closing duo acoustic rattle through Chuck Berry blues “Beautiful Delilah” must say quite a lot about the pair’s enduring friendship and love for what they do, which allows them to deliver resonant material like this almost 65 years after the Rolling Stones were formed.
