jagger

Here’s a terrible-seeming idea: The Rolling Stones should get started on their next album.

Like, now.

After taking nearly two decades to release 2023’s “Hackney Diamonds” — the band’s first set of original material since “A Bigger Bang” in 2005 — the Stones are back this week with a follow-up, “Foreign Tongues,” that took them less than 36 months to get out.

And it’s the better record in every way.

In the old days, of course, two and a half years was all they needed to make “Beggars Banquet,” “Let It Bleed” and “Sticky Fingers.” So let’s not get too carried away by the fact Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood are working as fast as they are in their late 70s and early 80s.

Yet to listen to the brisk and sportive “Foreign Tongues” is to hear a band clearly going on instinct rather than overthinking the music à la any number of veteran acts in legacy-maintenance mode. I don’t know if the result is the Stones’ best since 1978’s “Some Girls,” but it’s definitely the funniest, which is actually the more impressive achievement.

“Wake up in the morning and you wanna make me puke,” Jagger sneers in the punky “Hit Me in the Head” — exactly the kind of lyric you’d hope to hear from a band whose only possible reason for still being in the game is to have a gas-gas-gas.

Like “Hackney Diamonds” — and, for that matter, like Paul McCartney’s “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” (to name one recent overthinking-veteran LP) — “Foreign Tongues” was produced by 35-year-old Andrew Watt, who’s made a career of helping boomer icons put a little shine on their late-in-life efforts. And he’s helped the Stones convene an appealingly motley crew of collaborators here, including McCartney (who plays bass on “Covered in You”), the Cure’s Robert Smith (who contributes guitar to “Divine Intervention”), Steve Winwood (who plays piano and organ throughout the album) and Bruno Mars (who’s credited with, uh, cowbell in “Never Wanna Lose You”).

You also get a welcome appearance from the late Charlie Watts in a hard-thwacking performance recorded before his death in 2021. (Steve Jordan otherwise keeps time.)

But none of the stunt casting feels like the point of the album, which instead simply doles out a dozen tunes in the Stones’ various idioms — the bluesy stomp, the country-ish lope, the sleazy disco jam — plus a couple of covers in just over an hour. It’s frisky and lighthearted, even when Jagger is lamenting what he sees as the sorry state of his beloved America in “Ringing Hollow” and when Richards is croaking about love having put him on his knees in “Some of Us.”

And when they go goblin mode, they really lean in: “Mr. Charm” is a demented soul-rock rave-up about how boring money is — OK, Mick — in which Jagger drops a diss of the “mad mogul Mr. Musk” into a verse laying out the delights of staying home and doing anagrams.

In “Divine Intervention,” Jagger offers a colorful travelogue of trips through New York and Los Angeles — “I kept moving on to Silver Lake / To play guitar with a brand new friend of mine” — while Richards and Wood get their guitars slip-sliding all over the place. “Jealous Lover” is gorgeously trashy: a horny little strut that sounds like “Dirty Mind”-era Prince doing “Waiting on a Friend.” (Legitimately loony Mick vocal here.)

For God knows what reason, the Stones offer up a faithful rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” with Jagger on harmonica. And the album ends with a very ragged take on Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah,” obviously meant to remind you of how the two lifers at the core of the Stones came together more than half a century ago.

The memory is ancient; the thrill, somehow, is alive.

THE Beatles and the Rolling Stones both launched their latest albums yesterday – on separate continents. 

It was a case of let’s attend the knights together in honour of British rock royalty, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Mick Jagger. 

At London’s fabled Abbey Road Studios, where the Fab Four recorded nearly all their songs, Macca held a lunchtime listening party for his latest LP, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane (out May 29). 

Then, in New York City hours later, Sixties chart rivals Jagger and Keith Richards as well as the later arrival to the ranks, Ronnie Wood, were seen strolling out of a Brooklyn theatre at the launch of their album, Foreign Tongues (out July 10). 

In a neat twist, Sir Paul plays bass on new Stones track Covered In You, recorded at the same session as his contribution to Bite My Head Off from 2023’s Hackney Diamonds. 

And BOTH albums were produced by American hotshot producer Andrew Watt, known for work with Ozzy Osbourne and Lady Gaga. 

END OF AN ERA?

Huge rock band spark SPLIT rumours after 14 years with cryptic video

NO CAP

Lewis Capaldi shocks fans as he drops the C-bomb in brutal takedown of troll

Before a select audience of fans and “my lovely son James” in Studio No2, McCartney, 83, introduced all fourteen tracks on his heartfelt 21st studio effort. 

For nearly two hours, he filled the time with fascinating anecdotes, playing select chords on his acoustic guitar and even mouthing some of the lyrics.  

Many songs have nostalgia-filled backstories, including As You Lie There about unrequited love for a girl called Jasmine. 

The “trippy” Mountain Top recalls Glastonbury, where he headlined in 2022, while Down South is about hitchhiking trips to Wales with George Harrison. 

Elsewhere, there’s a first-ever duet with fellow Beatle Ringo Starr on new single Home To Us, also featuring Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri. Salesman Saint is a moving tribute to Macca’s parents, Jim and Mary. 

Meanwhile, the Stones also heralded their album with the release of a single, In The Stars, the follow-up to Rough & Twisted, a limited edition vinyl single which appeared under a pseudonym, The Cockroaches. 

Then Oscars host Conan O’Brien hosted a Q&A session with Mick and Keith, both 82, and Ronnie, 78. 

Besides McCartney, other guests on Foreign Tongues (also 14 songs) include The Cure’s Robert Smith on three tracks and Steve Winwood.