The Stones!

I bought the new Stones album off of iTunes after I read eight seperate good reviews and heard another one on NPR. Oh, my god: it actually doesn't suck. This may be their first consistently non-sucky album of original material (since 1981's Tattoo You was outtakes) since Some Girls in 1978. They sound like they actually care and aren't mailing in a performance so they can get richer off the ensuing tour: Mick's vocals sound better than they have since I was crapping myself and Jimmy Carter was President; Keith and Ronnie and Charlie (who, it must be said, never sucked even when the rest of the band did) sound like they're jamming in somebody's basement--you know, like a rock n' roll band and not a dull corporate megolith, like they have for ten-or-so straight albums with the exception of a few decent tracks on the otherwise sucky Voodoo Lounge. They've somehow managed to shake off the glitzy, polystyrene overproduction that has poisoned two decades of their musical efforts and managed to sound like they're having fun again. It's blowing my mind. It's not just a good Stones album, which means a better-than-average effort by a washed up bunch of geezers: it's a plain good album, as in it would be a good debut album for a band starting today. It's as if somebody kidnapped those bored old men who still put on a great show and replaced them with actual musicians. There's funk and blues and fighting and fucking and cursing and drinking, you know, the Stones before they decided that selling celebrity was a lot easier than making good music.

Go check it out. Really. I wouldn't lie to you.