{"id":545788,"date":"2026-07-12T11:18:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/545788\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:18:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:18:34","slug":"review-the-rolling-stones-foreign-tongues-superdeluxeedition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/545788\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Rolling Stones \/ Foreign Tongues \u2013 SuperDeluxeEdition"},"content":{"rendered":"

New albums by the great canon artists, those ancient musical beasts who invented this thing we call pop music and still have the temerity to peddle it, generally exist for one of two reasons.<\/p>\n

The first is to prove to the public, or to the band themselves, that despite advancing years and an audience that clamours mostly for catalogue, they can still pull it out of the bag. 2023\u2019s Hackney Diamonds was just such a record for The Rolling Stones<\/a>. They had released only one album of original music since the 90s, lost a core component with the death of Charlie Watts, and retained only the central duo of Jagger and Richards from the line-up that recorded most of their classics. Any new album had a point to prove: we\u2019re still here. We can still do this. We still want to do it. It worked, too. Hackney Diamonds was the best Rolling Stones album since Tattoo You, a deserved, revitalising success that showed the world that, despite decades of bickering, advancing years and the departure or death of most of the original band, The Rolling Stones were still capable of being The Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n

Foreign Tongues has a different reason for existing. There\u2019s nothing to prove this time. Having made their point once, it\u2019s no surprise that they could make it again three years later. The 25th Rolling Stones album exists for the other reason artists like The Stones, Paul McCartney<\/a>, Bob Dylan<\/a>, Neil Young<\/a> and the other 60s workhorses make new records: because they fancied doing it. It\u2019s just what they do. They don\u2019t need new music to expand the brand, promote the tour or make money. They do it because they\u2019re a band and bands make records. \u201cFancy doing an album, Keith?\u201d \u201cYeah, why the fuck not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arriving just before Mick Jagger\u2019s 83rd birthday, Foreign Tongues picks up where Hackney Diamonds left off. Again, Andrew Watt produces; again, the songs pull from every decade rock \u2018n\u2019 roll has existed in. The Stones, after all, have been there for most of them. It\u2019s the sound of the best bar-room rock band there has ever been settling in and doing what they do. Rather well, as it happens.<\/p>\n

The A-list guests are back too, in a way that could feel gratuitous but mostly doesn\u2019t. Paul McCartney turns up on bass again. Robert Smith is in there somewhere, though you\u2019ll be hard pushed to spot him. Steve Winwood<\/a>, much more visible, plays organ across nine tracks. Bruno Mars, of all people, contributes an almost inaudible cowbell to \u2018Never Wanna Lose You\u2019, apparently hired as a form of funk insurance. Charlie Watts appears from beyond the grey veil on \u2018Hit Me in the Head\u2019, preserved from a session before his death in 2021 \u2014 among the record\u2019s most satisfying moments, for reasons we\u2019ll get to.<\/p>\n

Opener \u2018Rough and Twisted\u2019 is proper vintage barroom-brawl Stones. Foreign Tongues contains three genuinely great Stones songs, tracks that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the classic era, and this is the first. Everything you want from the band is on show: there\u2019s push and pull and swing, while Jagger honks on his harp and sings about Muddy Waters. The guitars are great. They\u2019re great throughout, actually: Keith in one speaker, Ronnie in the other, crunching and jangling at each other. Richards has said that he\u2019s the cake and Ronnie\u2019s the icing, and you can hear that relationship on almost every song here \u2014 Keith laying down the bar-room riffs, Ronnie colouring around the edges. They are one of the few bands in which the rhythm guitarist is somehow the lead guitarist, even when someone else is playing the solos. Everyone follows Keith. Richards and Wood are the engine of the record. When it works, it works because those two are locked in on each other and everyone else, including the producer, knows to stay out of the way.<\/p>\n

Alas, that isn\u2019t always the case. Watt has an ear for what The Stones can still do at scale, and his instincts generally serve them well. But he also buffs off the grit, and the Stones are all about the grit. \u2018Never Wanna Lose You\u2019, with its Some Girls funk shuffle, is a case in point: perfectly serviceable, Bruno\u2019s cowbell notwithstanding, with long-time bassist Darryl Jones (whose now been the bass player for the Rolling Stones for longer than Bill Wyman was) putting in a solid shift, but \u2018Jealous Lover\u2019 does this better a few tracks earlier and \u2018Miss You\u2019 did it much better half a century ago. \u2018Side Effects\u2019 \u2014 the closest thing here to the 90s Stones \u2014 is the clear low point: \u201cI\u2019m taking pills and I drink like a lush\u201d is a great lyric attached to a song that never wakes up. A less enamoured producer might have cast both into the bonus-material bucket, the modern equivalent of \u2018save it for a B-side\u2019.<\/p>\n

His affection also extends to the running time. There are 14 tracks here, several passing five minutes, and almost everything could lose a minute or so. Extended choruses and outros abound, undercutting an album that is at its best when it is leanest.<\/p>\n

Watt\u2019s more irritating production trademarks, though reined in somewhat, still occasionally spoil the party. Compression flattens the dynamics just when a song needs room to swing; the guitars are scrubbed a shade too clean for a band whose appeal is the dirt under the fingernails; and, most distractingly, the massed backing vocals on the bigger choruses are stacked and processed until they take on an oddly synthetic sheen that no gospel singer ever had. It\u2019s the sound of a producer who loves the band slightly too much to leave well alone, reaching for \u2018modern\u2019 and \u2018huge\u2019 when \u2018loose\u2019 and \u2018live\u2019 would have served the songs better. He makes them sound urgent and punchy. That was always the brief and he delivers. But the Stones spent sixty years learning that the magic is in the space between the players. It\u2019s annoying when Watt keeps filling it in.<\/p>\n

Get past that and there\u2019s an awful lot to enjoy. \u2018Mr Charm\u2019 has a gospel-backed chorus that flirts with \u2018Gimme Shelter\u2019 \u2014 dangerous territory, that \u2014 but otherwise heads somewhere different: rollicking, funny and tossing off a couple of the sharpest Jagger lines on the record. \u2018Divine Intervention\u2019 hides its Robert Smith cameo so effectively you\u2019d never know he was there, but the song itself is a belter, a Some Girls-style boogie with a coda of soulful horns that opens it into something unexpectedly celebratory. Springsteen<\/a> would not be embarrassed to find it on one of his better late-period records.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ringing Hollow\u2019 is the second of those three classics, and possibly the best thing here. Country Stones. A letter to America that isn\u2019t angry. It\u2019s disappointed, which is a much harder mood to sell. The band pull it off. They\u2019ve been in love with the place since they were teenagers and have explored more of it than most. \u201cThere\u2019s always a king trying to pick up the crown\u201d is pretty pointed. Again, it runs long, but that\u2019s an issue across the board.<\/p>\n

The third classic is \u2018Some of Us\u2019, in which Keith Richards takes the mic and leans into his years. One of the album\u2019s great strengths is that Mick Jagger, at 82, doesn\u2019t sound like an old man. Another is that Keith does. And that\u2019s what makes him interesting. It leaves the song unusually exposed. You can almost see the tears leaving clean lines down his grubby, craggy face. The arrangement pulls closer to Let It Bleed\u2019s country-gospel than to any of his solo records, and Jagger\u2019s harmonies in the final section provide one of the few moments here that genuinely raises the hairs on the back of the neck.<\/p>\n

Another comes in Ronnie Wood\u2019s solo on \u2018Back in Your Life\u2019, a long, weeping performance of the kind he is rarely given room to unleash. Jagger introduces it with a delighted \u201cCome on, Ronnie!\u201d Wood has said the performance was bound up with hearing of the deaths of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, and there\u2019s something in the playing that knows it. The song itself sits at the \u2018Wild Horses\u2019 end of the ballad catalogue, and though it wouldn\u2019t dream of comparing itself, Jagger\u2019s sincerity steals it. It is not quite a fourth classic, but it may contain the album\u2019s finest individual performance. He\u2019s not phoning any of this in.<\/p>\n

Charlie Watts returns on \u2018Hit Me in the Head\u2019, a fast, sardonic garage-punk thing on which Jagger plausibly sings about wanting to be knocked unconscious to speed up his own demise. Watts might be beyond the grave, but he\u2019s right on the groove, and the pocket he creates isn\u2019t your imagination. It sounds satisfyingly like the Stones because it is the Stones. Steve Jordan does a fine job elsewhere. But when Watts is there, you really can feel it.<\/p>\n

Jagger wanted a \u2018blunt, punk bass sound\u2019 on \u2018Covered in You\u2019, and so naturally phoned Paul McCartney, the most melodic bass player who has ever lived. You have to hand it to Macca, though: he knows how to serve the song. The bass grunts. Jagger sounds properly annoyed about something \u2014 \u201cyou always try to give me bad reviews\u201d does suggest he\u2019s stewing about the Amazon ratings on his solo albums \u2014 but the intensity of the outro over a great little Ronnie lick is fantastic. Meanwhile, a cover of Amy Winehouse\u2019s \u2018You Know I\u2019m No Good\u2019 shouldn\u2019t work. Jagger cannot reproduce the wounded self-indictment of Winehouse\u2019s vocal, and Watt leans too hard on Mark Ronson\u2019s polish where the track needed roughing up, but Winwood\u2019s organ sounds great, Jagger\u2019s harmonica is ace, and there\u2019s more crossover between the Stones and Winehouse\u2019s rootsy soul than the pairing initially suggests.<\/p>\n

Foreign Tongues closes, as Hackney Diamonds did, with a cover from the band\u2019s oldest heroes. That record signed off with Muddy Waters\u2019 \u2018Rolling Stone Blues\u2019; this one goes with Chuck Berry\u2019s \u2018Beautiful Delilah\u2019, a song the Stones were playing on the radio in 1964. It\u2019s intimate, acoustic-led and deliberately vintage, with slide guitars drenched in reverb. It does smack a bit of \u2018look at us, we\u2019re still keeping it real\u2019, which is the one thing the Rolling Stones absolutely don\u2019t need to do. They\u2019ve earned being whoever they want to be. But it\u2019s a hard heart that doesn\u2019t enjoy it. If this turns out to be their last album, which seems unlikely but is theoretically possible, closing with Chuck Berry, whose \u2018Come On\u2019 became their debut single, creates a satisfying and presumably intentional full-circle moment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost certainly not the last Stones album; Jagger says he\u2019s already writing the next one, and there\u2019s no particular reason to disbelieve him. What Foreign Tongues is, meanwhile, is the sound of a band with nothing left to prove making a record anyway \u2014 and, when it counts, sounding as though they wouldn\u2019t want to be doing anything else. They didn\u2019t need to make this. They did. That\u2019s plenty.<\/p>\n

Review by Marc Burrows. Foreign Tongues is out today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tracklisting <\/p>\n

Rough And Twisted
\nIn The Stars
\nJealous Lover
\nMr. Charm
\nDivine Intervention
\nRinging Hollow
\nNever Wanna Lose You
\nHit Me In The Head
\nYou Know I\u2019m No Good
\nSome Of Us
\nCovered In You
\nSide Effects
\nBack In Your Life
\nBeautiful Delilah<\/p>\n

SuperDeluxeEdition.com\u00a0helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New albums by the great canon artists, those ancient musical beasts who invented this thing we call pop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-545788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}