A "new direction" has been promised with this album. After attempting to emulate the ambitious sprall of 'Exile On Main Street' with mixed results on 'Voodoo Lounge', the production credits alone on this release - the Dust Brothers and Danny Saber (Black Grape) - indicate that the Stones are aiming for a distinctly late-90s feel.
Opening track 'Flip The Switch', though, is a slice of prime-time Stones. Charlie's whipcrack snare and those familiar jagged riffs frame Jagger's tale of a man on Death Row. An unspectacular if reassuring start. Things improve with first single 'Anybody Seen My Baby' with its burbling, funky bass and haunting keyboards. Jagger even does a little rap.
And that basically sets the template for the rest of the album - a mixture of familiarity juxtaposed against attempts to reinvent the Stones wheel. The booming 'Might As Well Get Juiced' certainly falls into the latter category, with the Dust Brothers distorting Jagger's drawling vocals and making the instruments sound as if they were recorded in some murky basement studio through primitive equipment.
Meanwhile, the likes of 'Low Down' and 'Gunface' are the Stones of many of their biggest hits - all snarling vocals and Keith and Woody weaving in and out of each other of the bass and drums - albeit less inspired. The two ballads - 'Already Over Me' and 'Always Suffering' - suffer from sounding too much like each other, with the latter preferable by virtue of its chorus, which recalls the bar room insouciance of their early 70s heyday.
Keith gets a record three contributions, with a pleasant cod-reggae tune in 'You Don't Have To Mean It', and the two closing ballads - the first of which, 'Thief In The Night', would have been better stuck away as a B-side.
There are some great moments on the record the murky opening of 'Out Of Control', the beautiful guitar solo in 'Saint Of Me', the crashing finale of 'How Can I Stop'. Yet overall this is just the musical equivalent of the Emperor's New Clothes - nothing more than another competent Stones album, the pick of which will be aired, alongside the real classics, in stadiums for the next 18 months to refute the charge that the band are merely trading in nostalgia. Nothing more, nothing less.
