Out with a bang, not a whimper

I'm guessing Chicago Tribune scribe Mark Caro's membership to the Rock Criterati Country Club is up for review. Nevertheless, he gets full marks for giving the lie to the cliche: "The Rolling Stones' best album since Some Girls/Exile On Main Street/Let It Bleed." But Caro's most interesting point comes towards the end of the story, when he posits:

"After more than 40 years, the question isn't whether the Stones ... can still make music that sounds good; it's whether they can make music that's necessary."

I would respond with a different question: How important is it for the Rolling Stones to reinvent the wheel with every new album? Bridges To Babylon made noble attempts to update their sound, adding to samples, some electronics, some trendy producers. While the results weren't embarrassing, they weren't necessarily compelling either.

Why do the Stones get downgraded for simply making a Stones album that sounds like, well, a Stones Album tm ? These are guys who wrote the rules for rock n roll. They've been broken many times over. There are plenty of people who do hip hop, electronica, dance music better. Is a Stones Album tm such a bad thing?

Are the Stones held to a different standard because they have the bad manners to not split up? Is it really terribly surprising that the Stones output over the last 25 years has less resonance than the first 15 years?

I'm still absorbing Bigger Bang, but to my ears it sounds looser and more powerful than anything they've done in a long time. It's about three or four songs too long. And someone should probably cancel Mick Jagger's subscription to The Nation. No, it won't make anyone forget about Exile. But if Wally Richie and the Nutley City Shack Shakers recorded this album, odds are you'd think it sounds pretty good. The fact that it's a Rolling Stones album means it has to stand up to some of the greatest songs ever written. That's kind of unfair to this album, which is pretty damn compelling.