The Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue Review 

Say what you will about lesser albums in The Rolling Stones‘ discography, they always had their fingers on the pulse of broad taste. A killer when the mood was right, for their blues rock and protest stomping days in the 1960s and 1970s. Where the band blurred both at their best and found a disturbing new edge with Goats Head Soup and Some Girls, they were drifting away from that sound worryingly fast. A pop orientation took hold of frontman Mick Jagger, and the band were, around the time of Emotional Rescue, willing to hear him out. The mood would soon sour. You can hear why on Emotional Rescue. Disco-infused duds which are, like the best bits of Tattoo You, reliant on an instrumental power. Those instrumental variations, the funk and groove of a song like Dance (pt 1) from Emotional Rescue, are both the salvation and collapse of an album like this. Varied moments, but truly devoid of the cultural commentaries that The Rolling Stones were well-suited for in their glory days.  

Not every song needs to be a complete capturing of the societal strain, though. There is still a large pocket of people wanting to dance their troubles away. That is who the band targets on Emotional Rescue. They carry out an upbeat operation, extracting those they can from their troubles with light, danceable pieces. A nicely intended track, though it’s lacking that sincerity. Embedding that with the swagger of a frontman grinding and kicking against the darker times is a crucial balancethat The Rolling Stones forget about here. Emotional Rescue is filled with instrumental thrills, but digging that little bit deeper reveals just how hollow the likes of Summer Romance and Send It to Me are. The latter track loosens its grip a little, tries for a floaty, laid-back sound as if the world were not falling apart around them, and fails to convince. A stuttering Jagger listing off countries and asking for their post, presumably, as the song begins fading out, is a massive misfire.  

One of the many which make up Emotional Rescue, an album that is, at the very least, honest. Not as engaging as the works around it, but as genuine as it gets for the band. Let Me Go is a white noise moment, a song which exists, though nothing happens throughout its three and a half minutes. Emotional Rescue, at best, is a catchy yet hollow record. It’s a strange situation demonstrating how in touch the band were with cultural moments and future genres of interest, but how they constantly fail to capture the heartfelt sway of those same styles. Where The Boys Go is the dated, bawdy sound My Generation avoided twenty years before this. A reduction from a group which formed the British rock sound is a tragic moment which highlights The Rolling Stones’ ‘80s decline.  

Good on them for kicking off the decade with one of their most miserable releases, though. It gives listeners a chance to tap out before the going gets really rough. Some may have been convinced by the band on the release of Tattoo You, a piece seemingly made up of songs dismissed during Emotional Rescue for being too strong. The title track is a somewhat stagnant feature, with saxophone spots here expanded on better with the leftovers forming Tattoo You. She’s So Cold is the standout track for this album, a bit of bright, stylish work amid some truly despondent attempts at fitting The Rolling Stones into the at-the-times popular tones. An artist who pursues the pop sound is more than likely going to make their music sound dated. That’s the case for Emotional Rescue.