Some Girls was the last good Stones record. It was 1979, Mick and Keith were still under forty, Charlie hadn’t had cancer yet, and they didn’t let Ron Wood play out loud so he couldn’t remind everyone what was lost when Mick Taylor quit the band. Maybe it was us, maybe it was them, but all that banty rooster stuff just didn’t play well as the band passed into genuine middle age. So, twenty-six years later, what do they do? Put out a kick-ass rock and blues CD. At their St. Paul show last month, they seemed supremely at ease with themselves–even Mick struts with a sense that things are somehow different now. On A Bigger Bang, that quality plays out in flat-out rockers like “Rough Justice” and ‘Oh No Not You Again,” and also blues gems like “Let Me Down Slow” and “It WonÕt Take Long.” Is this the same band that sang “Under My Thumb” so long ago? Yes, but it seems the women are on top now–and we’re all okay with that.
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