The Rolling Stones have released many wonderful records over the last few decades, but there has been a sense of renewed enthusiasm around the band in recent years. Hackney Diamonds was a wonderful album, and the band’s association with Andrew Watt proved to be a perfect match. Foreign Tongues reunites The Rolling Stones with Watt, and the results are once again spectacular.
The album flows very naturally from beginning to end. There are a lot of different moods throughout these songs—some are melancholic, while others are energetic, jumpy, and full of groove. As you become familiar with the tracks, you inevitably find yourself pacing your steps to the grooves this record offers.
The music is exceptionally well played, and Mick Jagger appears to be in top-notch form. You look at the ages of these players and say to yourself, They can’t possibly be this proficient and vital. Yet, sure enough, they deliver track after track as if they aren’t even trying. Even the cover of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” feels like a Stones song, and in some ways, maybe it always was. Keith Richards shines on “Some of Us”; his vocals always seem to touch upon that other dimension. Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah” closes the record, and it’s a very fitting and thoroughly respectable cover.
“In the Stars” is definitely a highlight. It has everything you love about The Rolling Stones, and while the album is filled with gems, this track drives in a way that nothing else quite does. “Back in Your Life” is almost the complete opposite, but its melancholic charm is absolutely superb. “Jealous Lover” has that late-1970s feel, as though it could have come straight off Some Girls or Emotional Rescue.
Foreign Tongues is another winner from the greatest rock ’n’ roll band of all time. You know you’re doing something right when you can release such an impressive record in your sixth decade as a band. The Rolling Stones seem to be unstoppable!
Mark Kadzielawa
