Music

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Buried Treasure: Spooky Tooth, Spooky Two

Spooky_Two_coverA simple drum beat opens the festivities here, accompanied by various grunts from the singer who’s warming up in the wings, before the incredibly loud, magisterial organ comes in. Spooky Tooth has arrived and, with them, the beginnings of the Progressive Rock movement that would flower in the following years.

Like pretty much every type of music, Progressive Rock has many fathers. The Moody Blues introduced spoken word poetry, themed albums, and flutes into the rock landscape. The Nice, featuring Keith Emerson who had done a spell in Spooky Tooth before they recorded their first album It’s All About, brought classical influences and loud organs into the mix and served as the embryonic version of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. But lost to the ages in this lineage is Spooky Tooth, a tight outfit featuring two keyboardists/singers that knew how to rattle walls with both their keyboards and their voices. Mike Harrison was a blues singer who took no prisoners, his powerful voice booming out like a less guttural version of Joe Cocker. His is the dominant vocal presence on the album, with Gary Wright (of “Dream Weaver” fame) joining in for impossibly high harmonies and the occasional lead.

“Evil Woman” is considered by many to be the album’s (and the band’s) defining moment and it’s safe to say that everything that made up Spooky Tooth is included in the song: gnarly guitars, loud keyboards, Harrison’s blues belting, Wright’s screaming falsetto. Their swapping of lines on “Evil Woman” is thrilling, though the song’s nearly nine minutes does get a bit wearing by the end. For me, the real gems on the album are the remaining tracks. While nothing says “Spooky Tooth” quite like “Evil Woman” does, the other tracks are even better.

“Waiting For the Wind” and “Feelin’ Bad” begin the proceedings with Harrison singing in his best bluesy voice and the choruses increasing in both volume and intensity. There really wasn’t another band who sounded quite like this in 1969, when Spooky Two was released. Keith Emerson’s Nice had a loud organ sound, but were far too wrapped up in their classical pretensions. Emerson played like Bach on speed; Spooky Tooth played like they were in the Cadet Chapel at West Point when God said “Let there be rock.”

Elsewhere, “Lost in My Dream” shows a psychedelic influence, “Hangman Hang My Shell On  A Tree” brings the album to a close with a lightly strummed guitar and heavy gospel vocal influences that build to a conclusion featuring the band playing and harmonizing as well as any of the other bands of their day. The album also features some guest appearances, though all are uncredited. Steve Winwood shows up on piano on “I’ve Got Enough Heartaches,” a plaintive gospel-tinged number. Joe Cocker lends his backing vocal to “Feelin’ Bad” and Dave Mason appears on the ballad “That Was Only Yesterday” playing his trusty guitar.

Perhaps the most interesting footnote to this album is the tough rocker “Better By You, Better Than Me” which caused an enormous controversy in the 1980s after the heavy metal band Judas Priest’s 1978 cover version got discovered by the Mothers of Prevention (as Frank Zappa dubbed them). The notorious trial that accused Priest of hiding in their music secret messages that led people to kill themselves, an absolutely ridiculous charge, was based on a cover of a Spooky Tooth song from this album. For the record, Judas Priest weren’t hiding backwards suicide exhortations in their music, and Spooky Tooth’s version of the song is better.

The band began to fracture after this album, though they hung on in name until the mid-1970s as a shell of what they were here. Guitarist Luther Grosvenor left to join Mott the Hoople and changed his name to Aerial Bender. Gary Wright became a session player who worked with George Harrison quite a bit and achieved massive success with “Dream Weaver.” Drummer Mike Kellie eventually signed up with the punk rock band The Only Ones, famous for their classic “Another Girl, Another Planet”. Bassist Greg Ridley joined Humble Pie.

Since Spooky Two was one of the forerunners of Progressive Rock, it also was not a victim to the excesses of that genre. Only one song here tops six minutes and the entire album is a tight, concise 37 minutes long. It would have been nice if Yes and ELP learned that lesson and remembered that they were writing songs, not symphonies. I’d like Prog Rock a lot more if they had.

Grade: A

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Alive, Again—Pearl Jam, Dark Matter

It’s easy to forget these days, 33 years after Ten introduced Pearl Jam to the world, just how much new music from them was anticipated. When their sophomore album, Vs., was released it broke all sales records for the first week of any release. But as with anything, familiarity breeds a certain level of contempt. Pearl Jam’s star is faded now, a totally expected reality in a day when rock music is all but dead and the band has assumed the status of “elder statesmen.” In an odd way, their current level of popularity is likely what the band hoped for before Ten was released, and what they wished for after that album turned them into multi-platinum, voice-of-a-generation, icons. The insane levels of fame the band achieved never sat well with the members, especially their guiding light Eddie Vedder, who would probably be just as happy selling albums out of the trunk of his car. They didn’t want to be bigger than the Beatles; they only wanted to be as big as Fugazi.

Pearl Jam’s reputation was carried on the back of their concert performances. They are one of the most exciting bands to ever take the stage. Their studio output, strikingly consistent, now sells a fraction of what those early albums sold and there’s no question the band has settled into their status as rock legends with nothing particularly new to say. Since 1998’s Yield, an album many (not me) consider to be their finest, they’ve released a string of good albums that would never, and could never, fire up a new audience like Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy did three decades ago. Binaural, Riot Act, the fun but lightweight Backspacer, the tepid and boring Lightning Bolt, and the experimental but uneven Gigaton all had their moments of greatness, but the band frequently sounded like they were going through the motions. Only on their criminally underappreciated eponymous 2006 album did the band show their old fire on any sort of consistent basis. The Pearl Jam album stands with their best work.

Now in 2024 comes another new album, Dark Matter. The album was hyped by the band with Vedder calling it “the best we’ve ever done” and guitar god Mike McCready extolling the virtues of the band’s new heavier (!) rock.

So is it the best, heaviest record they’ve ever done? Nope. Does that mean it’s not good? Also, nope. In fact, Dark Matter is the best album the band has put out since 2006, when the war in Iraq fired up Vedder’s righteous indignation and inspired some of the band’s most ferocious playing. The new album is far less political and more personal, though politics does enter the mix at times (fortunately not in the ham-fisted way it did on Gigaton).

Musically the stars of the show on this album are guitarist Mike McCready, whose revved-up solos are among the best he’s ever done, and drummer Matt Cameron. Apparently the guys in Pearl Jam pressured Cameron to really cut loose on this album, to play like he used to in Soundgarden, and the drummer responded. Dark Matter contains much of Cameron’s finest work, his best work with Pearl Jam, and is one of the great drum recordings of the rock era. He always tended to get a little lost in the shuffle of great drummers who came out of the alternative rock scene because Soundgarden was always something of a faceless band with the exception of Chris Cornell. Dark Matter is the definitive proof that Cameron is right up at the pinnacle of great drummers from Keith Moon and Ginger Baker to Dave Grohl and Jimmy Chamberlain. Throughout Dark Matter, Cameron swings like the great jazz drummers, plays fills like Ringo after a shot of speed, and pounds like Bonham. It’s never less than a thrilling performance.

From the outset, a pair of adrenalin-fueled propulsive rockers named “Scared of Fear” and “React, Respond” the mission statement of the album is evident. This is Pearl Jam as God intended them to be. The experimentation with different textures and rhythms from Gigaton is gone, and the band has clearly woken from the slumber in which they recorded Lightning Bolt. In their place is the fast-paced, stripped down sound of Vs., mixed with the adult songcraft of Yield. In short, Pearl Jam is still alive.

The intensity drops a few notches with “Wreckage”, which bears a passing resemblance to Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” before picking up again with the title track. “Dark Matter” may not be the fastest or punkiest track on the album, but it is certainly the heaviest. Matt Cameron provides a rock-solid anchor mixed with ridiculously fast fills as Mike McCready and Stone Gossard play slab-of-granite riffs and Eddie Vedder summons all his considerable passion into the vocal.

Throughout the album Pearl Jam isn’t afraid to embrace the contradictions that made them such an exciting and intriguing band from the beginning. Whether it’s arena-ready mid-tempo rock (“Won’t Tell”), sped-up punk (“Running”), acoustic-based rock ballads (“Setting Sun”), Who-ish ravers (“Got To Give”), or catchy pop (“Something Special”), they deliver some of the best songs they’ve done in their lengthy career. Best of all is “Upper Hand,” a nearly six-minute track that begins like a U2 outtake from The Joshua Tree, settles in to a beautiful ballad that features Vedder’s best vocal on the album, and then inexorably builds until it explodes into a volcanic McCready guitar solo.

Producer (and credited co-songwriter) Andrew Watt is a Pearl Jam fan who seems to be specializing in giving a boost to rock bands that have been showing their age (he also produced the latest Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds, their best in decades). The album was written and recorded in just three weeks which tells me the key to the success of Dark Matter is that Watt didn’t give the band time to overthink things, unlike the previous two albums. The result is a late-era Pearl Jam album that hangs comfortably with their 1990’s prime releases.

Grade: A

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Buried Treasure: The Monkees, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones It’s an easy mistake to make, to judge The Monkees by their hit singles without ever diving any deeper. After all, it’s not like they were a real band driven to make artistic statements over the course of an LP. But easy or not, it’s a mistake. In fact, the Monkees albums are a virtual treasure trove of potential hits; with a band constructed to be a hit machine, virtually all of the songs that were given to them were viewed as potential singles, and the songs written by the band members were their attempts to break the stranglehold the producers held over their product.

It’s well known that the Monkees were not an organic musical entity. In the Monkees’ musical suicide note, the elegiac “Porpoise Song” by Carole King, Mickey Dolenz’s beautiful tenor describes the band as “a face/a voice/an overdub has no choice/and it cannot rejoice.” For their second album, the appropriately named More of the Monkees, the band was not even aware that the album had been released until they saw it in a record store. On their third album, Headquarters, the Monkees seized creative control. They chose the songs and they played all the instruments on the album. It was a very good album, with several songs written by various band members. From an instrumental perspective nobody will ever mistake it for a Mahavishnu Orchestra album, but the songs were well-served by their arrangements. The group was rightfully proud of the album which shot to number one for a week or so before the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and turned Headquarters into a footnote.

Wisely, the pre-Fab Four decided to split the difference with their next album. They played most of the typical rock instruments with the exception of bass and drums, but left the majority to studio musicians. They also relied on professional songwriters more than they had on the previous album. The result was their best, and only truly cohesive, album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. For thirteen songs (well, twelve songs and Peter’s plosive palaver “Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig Porky”), the Monkees sing their usual assortment of love songs, but mixed in are odes to a traveling salesman who seems to be selling something quite illegal (“Salesman”), an oblique lyric about the Sunset Strip riots set to a way-ahead-of-its-time Moog synthesizer backing (“Daily Nightly”), and not one, but two(!) not-particularly-subtle songs about using and losing an underage groupie (“Cuddly Toy”, “Star Collector”).

Elsewhere on the album the songs range from Davy Jones’s “Hard to Believe,” a slice of Dionne Warwick-style pop, to “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?”, one of the earliest examples of what would later be known as country rock, to “She Hangs Out,” a tough mid-tempo rocker sung convincingly by Jones, to the soft-rock stylings of “Don’t Call On Me.” Of particular note are the Nesmith-sung “The Door Into Summer” and “Love Is Only Sleeping,” a vaguely psychedelic song that has aged extremely well, and “Words” which features an impassioned vocal from Dolenz and a driving bass line courtesy of the album’s producer Chip Douglas.

Mixed in with all this is the ultimate Monkees track, the withering look at suburbia’s status symbol culture, “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and sung beautifully by Mickey Dolenz (was there ever a more sheerly listenable singer?), this is the definitive Monkees song, an insanely catchy ear worm that casts a cynical eye on the band’s own audience.

The year 1967 was an incredible one for rock music, largely considered one of the best. The Beatles released their “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” single along with Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. The Doors released their first two albums, and Jimi Hendrix changed the world for guitar players everywhere with Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold As Love. Jefferson Airplane hit big with Surrealistic Pillow. Bob Dylan laid the cornerstone of Americana music with John Wesley Harding.

It would be silly to lump the Monkees in with the titans of the rock music world. Their two 1967 albums broke no new ground, and have been largely forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans. The casual listener is satisfied with a solid Greatest Hits album from the group. But that doesn’t mean the albums aren’t good, and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd is the best they ever released. In a world of streaming music, where all of these albums still live and wait to be heard, the casual fan would be well-served to listen. The Monkees may have been a pre-fabricated group built for television, but they were gifted with gold in their song choices and in their voices. They were much more than the hit singles.

Grade: A-

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Here Comes Everybody: The Story of The Pogues, by James Fearnley

Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the PoguesDissolution never sounded better than The Pogues. It seems almost churlish to ask how good the band would have been if they had tempered their wildly self-destructive tendencies and concentrated on the music. In his new memoir, Pogues accordionist and multi-instrumentalist James Fearnley asks the question whether it was Shane MacGowan’s headlong pursuit of oblivion that made him such a great artist. He doesn’t answer because there is no answer. Shane MacGowan was who he was, and never changed. The fact that he made it to the age of 65 before succumbing to his lifestyle is testament to the man’s constitution.

Just as any biography of The Doors quickly becomes a book about Jim Morrison, there’s no getting around the fact that the story of the Pogues is the story of Shane. Even though Fearnley gives plenty of ink to the other band members, MacGowan is the North Star. Even the cover of the book features Shane standing at the forefront while the rest of the band is in the background with their faces turned away from the camera.

The story here starts with MacGowan’s and Fearnley’s pre-Pogues band, the tastefully named Nipple Erectors (or The Nips, for short). MacGowan had discovered punk rock in mid-1970s England, quickly becoming one of the main faces on the scene. You can see a young MacGowan in dozens of film clips and photographs documenting the rise of bands like the Sex Pistols. The Nips were a very generic pub rock band with punk aspirations. There was nothing particularly interesting about them, as can be heard in what few recordings there are. There was certainly no indication of what MacGowan and Fearnley would do next.

By synthesizing traditional Irish folk music with the intensity and drive of punk rock, MacGowan and Fearnley created something entirely new. It was a recipe that later bands like the Dropkick Murphys and Black 47 would take up, though none of those bands came close to the gorgeous lyricism of the Pogues. The later bands took the wrong lessons, substituting ham-fisted party anthems and rebel songs for the more literate poetry that the Pogues, at their best, provided.

Fearnley is an excellent writer. It’s clear that he had literary ambitions before music took him down a different path. He sometimes gets a little precious with the language (e.g., the weather isn’t mild, it’s “clement”), but he seems at times to be downplaying the role MacGowan has in the story. Every member of the band drinks an enormous amount, but the death spiral of MacGowan seems to come out of nowhere. He’s a heavy drinker one minute and completely out of control the next, as if there were no linear progression of his illness. The singer they fired in a Japanese hotel room while on tour seems to be a different animal than he had been up to that point. (His response to being fired: “What took you so long?”) There is some discussion about Shane’s degraded vocals as time went on, but the final album with Shane, Hell’s Ditch, is almost completely ignored as is the fact that the vocals on the album are slurred and sloppy. MacGowan’s strong, if not very pretty, tenor was gone by that time. Whether this was a conscious choice to downplay the band’s notoriety in place of the sublimity of the music is a question only Fearnley can answer, but the effect is somewhat jarring.

The Pogues were almost a living stereotype of an Irish band. Profane, hard-drinking, boisterous, but with the soul of poets and the blood of their ancestors coursing through their veins. They sang songs about drinking, and fighting, and of Ireland’s oppression by the English. Anyone who’s ever been to an Irish wake will recognize the setting of “The Body of An American”. They sang love songs that bordered on inexpressible beauty. It’s almost impossible to believe that lyrics for songs like “The Broad Majestic Shannon” or the simply beautiful “Lullaby of London” came out of a man who claimed to have not been completely sober since the age of fourteen. Impossible, at least, until you’re more familiar with some of the great Irish literature.

The Pogues continued after Shane was kicked out, including a stint with Clash frontman Joe Strummer leading the band, but it wasn’t the same and Fearnley skips that time entirely. This is really a memoir of his time with Shane, of the great music on Red Roses for Me, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, and If I Can Fall From Grace with God. It’s a sad story, as the final years of Shane’s life are. He died in 2023, after being confined to a wheelchair for eight years when a fall broke his pelvis. He was an unrepentant drunk right up until the end. But now that the drinks are gone what remains are the lyrics, and they are timeless…despite the profanity.

Fearnley’s book has its shortcomings, but it’s a great story told well. The Pogues story in all its rambunctious glory may be best told by someone not so heavily invested in the story. But until that book comes, this is a worthy addition to the bookshelf.

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The Rolling Stones: A Bigger Bang

A_bigger_band_album_cover_(Wikipedia)After Bridges to Babylon, the Stones became an almost endless touring machine. In 1998 they released the live No Security album, and followed that up with a double CD Live Licks in 2004. They also started repackaging their older material. The singles from their early years until 1971 were issued as multi-CD sets replicating the original vinyl releases, and the compilation Forty Licks was the first career-spanning set the Stones had ever released and included four new songs that don’t belong within a mile of a best of The Rolling Stones.

The longest the Stones had ever gone without releasing an album was the four years between Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge. But now, raking in the bucks as a touring jukebox, regurgitating old songs and performances from new tours as product, it seemed like the band had run out of gas as a creative unit. It took eight years for the Stones to release the follow-up to Bridges to Babylon, and it was what many assumed would be their recorded swan song.

To say that A Bigger Bang fails to live up to vintage Stones albums like Sticky Fingers or Exile On Main Street is an understatement. Nevertheless, the intention of the album was to strip away a lot of the excess that had been part of the band’s sound and get back to basics. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards collaborated more closely than they had in years, writing the songs while Charlie Watts was battling throat cancer. The horn players and backing vocalists (with the exception of multi-talented Blondie Chaplin, who appears on only two songs) were absent, leaving only Chuck Leavell’s organ and Daryl Jones’s bass as the only prominent instruments outside the core of the band.

The result was that this was the most stripped down album they’d released in decades. You’ve got to go back to Some Girls and Emotional Rescue to find the Stones this scaled back. This is their version of the Beatles’ Get Back concept and the good news is that a very large part of it is successful. The album was widely praised, probably over-praised, when it was released. It was hailed as a complete return to form by critics.

It’s not a complete return to form. As raw as the band sounds, the production is still somewhat glossy, and there are a couple of songs that miss their mark as much as anything they ever did. It lacks the sonic experimentation of albums like Undercover and Bridges to Babylon, preferring to be as close as the 2005 Rolling Stones could get to a White Stripes album (i.e., not really all that close). At over 64 minutes, it’s just a shade shorter than Exile on Main Street, which would make this another double album that should have been a single (see also Voodoo Lounge).

The album kicks off with a pummeling rocker called “Rough Justice”, their best opening salvo since “Start Me Up”. This is the band playing like garage rockers, with vicious slide guitar from Ron Wood while Keith grinds out the rhythm guitar. Keith’s guitar has rarely sounded so distorted, and Charlie Watts barrels through the song like a steam train. Even Jagger is in fine form, kicking off the album with a fun play on words that could sound convincing coming only from him. He may have been in his early 60s when the band recorded the album, but Mick’s gonna Mick.

The intensity drops for the mid-tempo rockers “Let Me Down Slow” and “It Won’t Take Long”, but what a pleasure it is to hear Jagger singing lead and joined on the harmonies by Keith…and only Keith. Ron Wood plays a stinging slide solo on “Let Me Down” and offers supple rhythm support on “Long.” On both songs, Daryl Jones plays intricate bass lines that lock in nicely with the ever-reliable Charlie Watts. Of the two songs, “Let Me Down Slow” is the dirtier, raunchier effort. Charlie’s drums are too clean on “It Won’t Take Long” and the bass is lower in the mix.

The Stones step back into the Seventies with “Rain Fall Down,” a tough funk track that could have fit on Black and Blue or even It’s Only Rock & Roll. Jagger is in fine voice, tipping his hat to rap by singing most of the song in a speak/sing voice. Daryl Jones’s bass is more prominent in the mix, as befits a funk song, but the ending drags too long. It’s a very good song that would have benefited from some judicious pruning.

The tempos drop for the ballad “Streets of Love.” Jagger’s over-enunciating but the acoustic guitars from Wood and Richards are solid, weaving together and building to an anthemic, electric, chorus. Charlie’s playing is understated and subtle, wisely resisting the urge to overplay in that arena-ready chorus. Ron Wood plays a great solo, aided by Keith on acoustic and Jagger on electric guitar. Chuck Leavell’s piano provides a stately backdrop. However, once again the song is too long, suffering from the same bloat that dogged many of the band’s songs since Voodoo Lounge.

The same can not be said of the delightful “Back of My Hand.” Talk about getting back to your roots! With the exception of some B-sides like “Fancy Man Blues” or “Cook Cook Blues,” the Stones had largely relegated traditional blues to being a strong influence on their brand of rock and roll, but this is what God intended the Stones to sound like back in 1963 (and by God I mean Brian Jones). It isn’t too dissimilar to songs like “You Got to Move” (Sticky Fingers) or “Casino Boogie” (Exile). Charlie thumps like Meg White, Keef plays a terrific slide solo, and Jagger breaks out his best blues voice while also playing bass guitar and absolutely terrific harmonica. This is the Stones going so far back that even Ronnie Wood wasn’t invited tp appear on the track.

All of this makes the next track sound worse than it is. Once again it’s Mick on bass for “She Saw Me Coming” but the addition of Blondie Chaplin on backing vocals makes the difference between this song and most of the album very obvious. Suddenly the garage band album sounds very professional. Charlie’s great, of course, but the track with it’s shout along title refrain, is an otherwise unremarkable piece of album filler that would have been better off as a B-side or a track on some future rarities album.

This is the point where the wheels start to get a little wobbly on the album. “Biggest Mistake,” also without Ronnie’s input, is more filler. It’s not a bad track, but it’s forgettable. Jagger is again over-singing, and Chuck Leavell’s organ is so subtle it’s barely there which raises the question of why they would bother. Keith’s guitar is good, with Jagger providing the rhythm.

“This Place is Empty” is a Keith ballad, that sounds remarkably like every other Keith ballad since Dirty Work‘s “Sleep Tonight.” A dusky vocal from Keith, complete with cracked notes, is not helped by cringeworthy lyrics like “Come on and bare your breasts/And make me feel at home.” It’s yet more filler. In some ways it’s good that the band answered eight years of silence with a double LP’s worth of music, but this middle section drags the whole effort down and can easily be skipped to provide a better listening experience.

Fortunately the band recovers some of its mojo on “Oh No, Not You Again,” another rocker played by the core original band of Mick, Keith, and Charlie with some help from Daryl Jones on bass. The band sounds charged up again, like they’re having fun. The Stones always had a sense of humor and it comes through in the fun and funny lyrics here. Charlie swings and throws in great fills, and Keith plays a great guitar solo.

Jagger takes over bass duty on “Dangerous Beauty,” another track featuring only the original Stones. Over slashing guitar chords, Jagger shout sings the lyrics and there’s a nice, tight, guitar solo from Keith. It’s otherwise an unremarkable track that probably could have been left off without harming the listening experience. This is in contrast to “Laugh, I Nearly Died,” an intense torch song that bears a familial resemblance to “Always Suffering” from Bridges to Babylon, but with much better production. Jagger’s vocals are layered, including a falsetto in the harmony, culminating in an a capella  climax of multi-tracked voices.

“Sweet Neo Con.” Then there’s this mess. Lyrically it’s a mash note to Condoleeza Rice, but the song’s an embarrassment. Musically it’s uninteresting. Keith is credited with guitar but he apparently wanted little to do with the song. Although he stood by Jagger’s desire to make a political statement, he also called it “cheap publicity” adding, correctly, “Nobody will know what it means in 10 years.” Charlie shows up for work and lays down a click track-worthy drum pattern. Lyrically it’s atrocious, managing to rhyme “certain” with “Halliburton” and even Jagger seems like he’s ashamed of what he’s singing. “Sweet Neo Con” is one of the most embarrassingly bad songs the Stones have ever done, and have I mentioned that this is the band that recorded “Gomper”?

Things pick up considerably with “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” a solid rocker. Ronnie Wood is back and plays a ferociously great guitar solo. Lyrically there’s even a really cryptic shout out to the Beatles with the lines “You look like a fucker, Sergeant Pepper/Are you going to throw up all over my face?” Hey, I didn’t say it was a good lyric.

One of the best songs on the album is hidden here, near the end. “Driving Too Fast” should have become a live favorite. Jagger sounds great, and Charlie swings like a beast. Chuck Leavell is again on piano and again barely audible. Ronnie and Keith play powerful rock and roll guitars, and the whole thing steams along like a Ferrari on the Autobahn.

Keith again closes the ceremonies, for the fourth time in five albums, with “Infamy”, but at least it’s not one of his typically sleepy ballads. It’s a mid-tempo number with a nice pun in the lyrics (“you got in infamy”). For the second time on the album, Blondie Chaplin sings backing vocals and makes the track sound more like a Keith solo song. Keith’s voice is more convincing on the uptempo numbers than on the ballads these days when the flaws in his cigarette/booze/drug-addled throat stand out.

A Bigger Bang is the album that sounds the most like the Rolling Stones since the Eighties. Much of it was recorded live as a trio with Keith, Mick, and Charlie. Overdubs were done later and the songs were fleshed out. Ronnie Wood appears on only nine tracks, roughly half the album, one song fewer than Daryl Jones on bass. For the first time in a long time, the remaining original members play on every song, supporting each other as they’re supposed to do. That gives the album more of a band feeling than anything they’ve done since when? Dirty Work? Undercover? Tattoo You, maybe?.

There are issues with the album. It was over-hyped on release because it starts so well and ends so well, but the middle of the album is clogged with filler and “Sweet Neo Con” should have never been recorded. Once again the Stones are victims of excess. Cut the filler, shorten a couple of songs, banish “Neo Con” into the cornfield and A Bigger Bang is the best album they’ve done in a very long time.

Grade: B