Review Summary: If there ever was one album to prove that age has nothing to do with making quality rock music, that would be Tattoo You.
Now
this is one fantastic 'silver period' album. After the 'return-to-form'
Some Girls the Stones were again at the top of the world commercially; big arenas, sell out concerts and God knows what else. What this comeback lacked, though, was a superb and timeless release since
Some Girls, excellent as it was, found the band trying too much in order to sound young and
Emotional Rescue was a total abomination. Thus, the guys gathered all the outtakes and unreleased material they had been recording since the turn of the seventies, tightened them up and released this
monster of an album.
The most interesting thing about this release is definitely the maturity that permeates all the songs; the band is no longer trying to out-punk the punks or out-disco the disco guys. Instead, they sound fully confident, aware of their age and place in time by not overdoing anything here. The guitars roar, but the rapid strumming of
Some Girls is not prevalent here. Mick sings with his trademark flair, but he is not raw and unpolished for the sake of being raw and unpolished. Finally, the songwriting here is at the very least excellent, with not a single song that can be deemed even 'moderately catchy'. It seems like the band looked back at their 1966-1972 period with a warm look and decided to create an album that feels like an older, wiser brother to, say,
Exile On Main St..
Regarding the actual music, now, the album is divided strictly in a hard and a soft side. The first six tracks here are pure rockers in the best tradition of the band, while the remaining tunes venture into the group's gentle balladeering. The hard side is magnificent; first of all, it features
Start Me Up, which is actually the last mega-hit from the band that everyone in the world has heard and loved. Boasting a masterfully uplifting riff and a laid-back performance from Mick, it manages to offer the pure, unadulterated rock catharsis the Stones are known for and then some more.
The atmosphere heats up with
Hang Fire, where the straight, fast strumming and Charlie's relentless drumming provide the perfect ground for Mick to lay his aggressive but tongue-in-cheek performance, by belting out funny lyrics in the likes of
I don't need the aggravation, I'm a lazy slob. After that, the listener is thrown into the jamming world of
Slave; Charlie leads the way with his steady, mid-tempo groove, while Keith lays down an
incredible riff behind the primal chanting from the rest of the members and the fluent sax lines. It is surely a reminder of
Can't You Hear Me Knocking, but with far less vocals and no Latin breakdown.
The other two rockers may not be
major works, but they are enchanting nonetheless.
Black Limousine is a standard blues song, but the melody is actually creative and the harp lines interesting. Imagine that! A
creative 12-bar blues in 1981; who would have known?
Neighbours may be hated for various reasons from a lot Stones fanatics around the globe, who underestimate it as an uninspired filler, but you shouldn't though; it is as sincere and kicking as any of the above standouts and,
even if you finally consider it as a filler and nothing more, you couldn't possibly deny that this is one of the catchiest filler pieces ever put to tape.
As if the number of gems found until now wasn't enough, the group had still enough powers left to present us with an unbelievably
wonderful soft side. Make no mistake, this segue of gentle and romantic songs can only be equalled with the soft numbers on Sticky Fingers; as soon as
Worried About You kicks in, it is evident that this will be unique, unlike the group's most recent efforts with softer tunes. The song alternates beautifully between relaxed tenderness and desperate affection in the blink of an eye, thanks to Mick's rapid changes between light falsetto and full, roaring singing that's aided by Keith's warm vocals; heartbreak at its finest. The closing
Waiting On A Friend is equally impressive. This time, though, the emotion transmitted is closer to bittersweet love and nostalgia; just listen to Mick’s delivery of a line like
A smile relieves a heart that grieves, remember what I said to make sure for yourself.
Tops is a Mick Taylor-era outtake and one wonders why a song like this was left out during the time, as
everything qualifies; Mick’s poignant delivery of the beautiful melody, Mick’s tremendous licks, Keith’s trademark riffing and, last but not least, Charlie’s and Bill’s refined rhythm section that keeps the whole affair in the air.
Heaven is, honest to God, an
ambient excursion, complete with astral percussion, heavenly guitars and an angelic performance from Mick; it is a soothing, relaxing masterwork that breaks successfully the balladry on the record by offering one of the most odd, but brilliant, musical moments of the group.
And there is more to the record!
Little T&A is, before you start getting all mixed up about the hidden meanings behind the title, a song about ‘tits’ and ‘ass’, set to an extremely catchy vocal melody that is punctuated by Keith’s druggy performance. Finally,
No Use In Crying, while featuring a breathtaking, heavy chorus, could have had a bit more into it musically; it isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but when compared to the other ballads here, it feels like the boys could have worked a bit more on that to make it even stronger. Both are, nevertheless, solid and emotionally satisfying songs as everything on here.
To summarize, this is the last
truly magnificent studio release by the Stones. Sure, they made a couple of solid efforts in the 90’s, too, but here they are in full flight; all of the songs are wonderfully written, the band sounds mature and confident with their age, the emotional catharsis is extremely high and in general, the only ‘flaw’ of the record, for most fans, is that there aren’t a lot of undeniable, top-ten-of-all-time songs here. On the other hand, there is absolutely not even a single tune here which I’d rate lower than ‘rock-solid’ and
that should be your reason for rushing out to find this record as soon as possible.
