The Fat Angel Sings

 Jagger recently launched the Rolling Stones’s 25th album declaring, “The thing about this record is, the Stones are a rock band that also has the capacity to do ballads, country music or dance music. So we don’t get stuck in one kind of style.” The same could be said of numerous bands, but what the singer was probably driving at was that the Stones have always been able to do all this while sounding utterly like themselves. Nobody else has been able to assemble their quintessentially just-shaky Jenga tower of sound, which often sounds like it could fall to pieces at any moment but somehow never does.

They have certainly also made their share of albums that sounded like they’d been phoned in from the cricket, but “Foreign Tongues” continues the creative renaissance that began with 2023’s “Hackney Diamonds“, which at the time was their first album of original songs in 18 years. Once again, producer and occasional musician Andrew Watt captures the rejuvenated band’s joy of playing in a room together – and, as guitarist Keith Richards put it recently, kicks their asses when needed. Perhaps drummer Charlie Watts’ death five years ago has sharpened the founding pair’s awareness that their band may not last much longer, so they may as well go down blazing and have fun while they do so.

“Rough and Twisted” is certainly a mightily raucous opening stomp, which references their early love of Chicago blues (“All I drank was Muddy Waters”). Similarly, almost 60 years after Jagger claimed to have been “baaawwnn in a crossfire hurricane” in “Jumping Jack Flash“, the singer leans into blues mythology again (“I was standing there when the lightning struck”) for “In the Stars”, a song which both acknowledges his good fortune and yells against the dying of the light: “Do you wanna dance until the roof caves in? / Yeah, and the guitars scream and the choir still sings.”

“Jealous Lover” shifts the mood for a slinky disco number in the mould of “Miss You” or “Emotional Rescue”, but “Foreign Tongues” isn’t nostalgic or a retread. It’s a thoroughly modern-sounding, occasionally political record that has the band confronting the world around them and their remaining time within it. Decades after “Street Fighting Man” and “Gimme Shelter” captured turmoil in the late 1960s, several songs speak truth to power, especially in the US.

‘Jealous Lover’. It’s the latest fantastic example of the Stones’ effortless ability to switch between styles, as they glide from the pop-rock dynamism of ‘In The Stars’ to this soulful groove featuring a captivating falsetto lead vocal by Mick Jagger. 

Eloquent guitar detail by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood is further enhanced by the redoubtable rhythm section of Darryl Jones on bass and Steve Jordan on drums and percussion, as well as the Stones’ longtime friend Steve Winwood on Rhodes and organ. ‘Jealous Lover’ continues the band’s lifelong love affair with R&B, as Mick delivers a “hands off” message to an over-inquisitive partner with such whip-smart lyrics as “You pray like a mantis, you’re emerald green”

“Lady Liberty don’t look so good when there’s a tear in her gown,” Jagger sings in “Ringing Hollow“, a sublime honky tonk ballad. In “Covered in You”, he wakes up “sick and tired of all these autocrats / You know, they seem to be breeding like a swarm of dirty rats with their missiles on parade”, while the punkier “Mr Charm” rails against “mad mogul Mr Musk” and those whose sole goal is making money.

Not that the notoriously financially savvy Mr Jagger is short of a few pennies to rub together himself, obviously, but in fairness, at (gulp) 82, the man sounds more energised and enthused than he has in years. He relishes lines such as the terrific “Divine Intervention’s” “dystopian values are too hot to handle” and “when they try to arrest you, I’ll come to your rescue”, then dusts off his harmonica skills for a sprightly romp through Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good“.

The band’s 1960s contemporary Steve Winwood is an inspired choice on organ and there are star-studded cameo appearances from Paul McCartney, the Cure’s Robert Smith, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and, bizarrely, Bruno Mars on cowbell. As per “Hackney Diamonds”, Watts drums from beyond the grave, this time on the fatalistic driving rocker “Hit Me in the Head”, recorded in 2021, and accordingly another song about going out with a bang.

The playful racket is offset by beautifully tender moments. Jagger cues up Ronnie Wood for a gut-wrenching guitar solo in “Back in Your Life” “and “human riff” Richards allows a glimpse behind his wildman image with a truly touching, vulnerable vocal in “Some of Us (“are on our knees”)“.

“Foreign Tongues” doesn’t match the holy run of albums that began with 1968’s “Beggars Banquet“, or later triumph “Some Girls“, but at their ages it’s remarkable – and paired with “Hackney Diamonds”, this is comfortably their best material in decades.

 “Foreign Tongues” is released on 10th July