Blue and Lonesome : that is the new album of Stones? – Le Figaro

CRITICAL With their new disc which comes out in stores today, the English group seems to finally assume his age.

Back to the sources for the Rolling stone which will be released on December 2, Blue and Lonesome. The album was engraved in London in the studio of Mark Knopfler. Since Aftermath, in 1966, the group is dedicated to build an original repertoire. On Blue and Lonesome, Jagger, Richards and Charlie Watts to re-engage with their past of cover bands and blues. A not of hand sketched, then, that the Stones were in the process of completing original compositions. The twelve titles of the album come from the 1950s and 1960s, with a particular emphasis on the scene of Chicago of the time.

From the first listening, the quality of the game harmonica of Mick Jagger jumps to the ears. Keith Richards once said about his brother and enemy that he was never as sincere as when he blew into the instrument. Present on almost all of the album, the harmonica is the undoubted star of the case.

It is refreshing to hear the septuagenarians applied to reproduce the music that has so influenced their early days. The instrumentation is small enough (2 guitars, bass, drums, and piano) evokes the sound of the label Chess, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Howlin Wolf at their beginnings. The saturation applied on the entire disk spoils yet quickly listening to the disc, made artificial by this process. The band played this album in his live, within a same room, what he hadn’t done for a very long time.

very Few standards on this disc, which contains several gems of the repertoire by Little Walter, including the title track, Blue and Lonesome, Howlin Wolf (the two titles, which are among the best in the selection), Magic Sam, Eddie Taylor and Otis Rush among others. The Stones are the most impressive on the fast songs on the rides, I blame the lack of solo marking in their ranks. The appearance of Eric Clapton on guitar on two tracks propelled the blues slow into spheres that the group does not reach ever since the departure of Mick Taylor in 1974. The guitar-hero, close to the Stones since the early 1960s, is one of the two guests of the project with the drummer Jim Keltner, credited for the first time on one of their disks.

The application of the group makes the disk much more sympathetic than anything he has produced since the correct Voodoo Lounge, in 1994. Concerned and applied, the musicians found a simplicity that has been lacking in some of their albums surproduits, on which they seemed to chase after the trends. In designing a real disc of old, Jagger and his accomplices seem to make peace with their heritage. Who would have said, while they were paying tribute to their idols in full British Blues Boom, they would continue to do so extensively after having surpassed the age of their favorite blues men?