Blue and Lonesome (2016)


 


  1. Just Your Fool
  2. Commit a Crime
  3. Blue and Lonesome
  4. All of Your Love
  5. I Gotta Go
  6. Everybody Knows About My Good Thing
  7. Ride 'Em on Down
  8. Hate To See You Go
  9. Hoo Doo Blues
  10.Little Rain
  11.Just Like I Treat You
  12.I Can't Quit You Baby

 

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the band once crowned “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World” would, eventually, come full circle. Long before the stadium tours, the excess, and the legend, the Rolling Stones were, at their core, a blues band. Their first handful of albums were practically cover collections, lifted straight from the dusty grooves of Chess and Excello records. So when Blue & Lonesome arrived, it wasn’t a reinvention—it was a return.

For many listeners it landed with a bit of a shrug.

I’ll admit up front, I’ve never been a huge fan of traditional blues. As much as I love the Stones, their periodic blues interludes—particularly live—have always felt like speed bumps. The obligatory 12-bar shuffle that shows up mid-set is usually when I check out. So you could say I’m biased, and you’d be right. This album just wasn’t made for people like me.

From a technical standpoint, the band sounds terrific. There’s a tightness here that’s almost shocking considering they’d been in the game for over fifty years by this point. The production, too, gives the material a welcome kick—warmer, fatter, and more vivid than the murky fidelity of their early years. And yet, for all that, none of it sticks. As I write this, I couldn’t name a single track without looking it up. That’s not a great sign.

Part of it may be creative exhaustion. Their last album of original material, A Bigger Bang, had come out more than a decade earlier. The one before that, Bridges to Babylon, was already twenty years in the rearview. Maybe the tank was running low, and this was the path of least resistance. Not that I blame them—artists have earned the right to play what they love. But for someone who enjoyed those late-period studio efforts far more than the average critic, I’d have much preferred new songs over reverent covers.

Eric Clapton guests on a couple of tracks—or so I’m told. I couldn’t tell you which ones. It all blends together in a haze of slow burns and harmonica solos. That’s not a knock on the execution—it’s more about my distance from the genre. All that said, you can’t fault the effort. For a band deep into their seventies, the Stones still sound alive and engaged. If this album speaks to your musical DNA, then you’ll likely find it a joy. But for me, it’s more of a respectful nod than a repeat listen.


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