Tuesday, January 1, 2013

#685 The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones No. 2

Another mostly-covers album, establishing The Rolling Stones as rock-solid R&B revivalists with a rock and roll streak. The band's picked up some swagger since their debut, coming with a bit more energy and menace.

By all accounts, if you played this alongside the Diddleys and Vincents and Waters and blues shouters of the previous decade, it would fit right in. Sure, it's a bit dirtier, a bit less fun, but the same basic pleasure centers get hit. The main real difference? This isn't for girls, at least not in any overt sense. Elvis, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, all those scuffed-edged white rockers did at least the occasional crooning, wisping sentimental ditties for the ladies to swoon over. None of that here*, and that lends the band a certain credibility - the rock hasn't changed all that much, but its attitude and presence and image has, for better or worse 4/5

* except maybe the wildly out-of-place cover of Under the Boardwalk, but its performance so thoroughly fails to achieve any romantic atmosphere, arriving at lewd at best, that I'm just going to hope that wasn't what they were going for

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