Oh, how profoundly sweet it is to have our best-beloved boys back, and back in badass form. There has, of course, long been a deeply-set theory about The Stones. Popular wisdom would have you believe that their best work is long years past, that they lost their shine even pre-Ronnie, that ‘Exile On Main Street’ was their last remotely palatable album before the legend eclipsed the labour and the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band In The World became wrinkly, boozy, spoiled tabloid caricatures of themselves.
Well, mercifully, it’s safe to say, loud and proud, that this well-worn but seldom proved postulation is a lazy fallacy. By going back to their Chicago bluesman roots, Mick and Co. seem to have not only re-discovered the flame that set them (and in turn the rest of the civilised world) off all those years ago, but doused it in petrol before nonchalantly lobbing one of Keef’s Marlboro onto it. It rocks, it rolls, it swings like King Louie on leapers. As ever, Charlie Watt’s drums hold down the rest of the band like the ever-reliable anchor they are, deliciously just enough behind the beat to pin down a rock-solid groove while being so damn fluid as to make this cut just move. You can literally hear hips here. It’s glorious. As Mick has often said, it’s Charlie’s band – and you can hear it here.
But, when Jagger spits “I’m a dealin’ maaaayn”, the whole world shifts on its axis and it all becomes his. Here is a man who, even pushing 75, still means it, still loves it, still needs it. And boy, do we still need him and his gang. Welcome back, boys. We’ve missed you.
