Description

"Bridges To Babylon" is a highly under-rated album, as it was probably doomed to be. From at least the late 80s onward, the Rolling Stones have been in a hard position. Anything they do with resemblance to their older albums there's going to be a certain portion of people who say 'aw, they're old dinosaurs, they can't do anything original', while at the same time any deviation from those same earlier releases is going to bring charges that they've either sold out by changing their style or that they've changed their style because they're just not capable of generating classic-style materialmore… on the level of the stuff from the 60s and 70s. I don't think either arguement holds any validity.

"Bridges To Babylon" doesn't sound like "Let It Bleed" or "Emotional Rescue", but then I wouldn't it want it to be a copy of either of those albums, any more than I'd want to pick up an earlier album I haven't heard in its entirety and have it sound just like the greats off Bridges or "A Bigger Bang". For a band that's so often been described as just soldiering through the same basic ground again and again, I feel the Stones have actually covered a pretty diverse range over their career, especially when you don't hear just their hit singles but some of their more eclectic songs off albums and B-sides. 'Continental Drift' off "Steel Wheels" is a great example of how far they can go out of their traditional territory and still be great, and that general trend carries on here. At the same time, Bridges, despite all the differences and flourishes, still has that indefinable sound that it doesn't seem like anyone but the Stones can quite capture. So between going traditional or forging new territory, you've really got the best of both worlds here. Album opener 'Flip The Switch' is a first-rate adrenalizer, a top rev up choice for lifting weights or the like. 'Already Over Me' does a smashing job mining that bittersweet melancholy territory the band has previously covered on tracks like 'Angie'. 'Gunface', one of the darkest tracks the Stones have done in decades, flows seamlessly into a song of a diametrically different vibe - the whimsical, horns-driven 'You Don't Have To Mean It', which features one of Keith Richards's greatest vocal performances ever. Every track on here is great; if a 'single' is supposed to be a song good enough to represent the entire album to a wide array of listeners then any of the 13 tracks here could have been a single.

Excellent music that'll still be excellent years after everyone's forgotten all the late-night 'comedians' and their 'over-the-hill rocker' jokes.

Tracks

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Info:

Category:

Music > Albums

Case Type:

CD

Release Type:

Retail

Comments:

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Cover Info:

Title:

Rolling Stones - Bridges to Babylon (1997) Retail CD

Part:

Back

Dimensions:

1774 x 1387 px

Size:

1,124 KB

Downloads:

3164 (0 today)

Uploaded:

Report a Problem Wrong Cover Duplicate Image Bad Quality Wrong Info

14/04/07 by Ice9

Quality Rating:

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Rated 5 of 5 (2 votes). Click CDs to vote!

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