A blues rock piece that was seemingly forgotten even before Hackney Diamonds released, The Rolling Stones remained relatively active in the studio after A Bigger Bang. Where none of their albums this century has been all that great, Blue and Lonesome is the closest the Mick Jagger-fronted group has gotten to recapturing the energy and stylish sound they brought to the blues rock genre. Harmonica-heavy, catchy numbers are the bread and butter of Blue and Lonesome, an album which soars in all the right places. It’s the breathing room the band is willing to give to a sound so familiar to them, that’s what works best of all. Knowing the little nuances and playing into them, bringing that stylishness through with Charlie Watts behind the drum kit or the subtler balance between guitarists Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, is what Blue and Lonesome does best of all.
Twelve strong songs which were not paid their dues at the time and still aren’t a decade on from release. That lighting round style of recording, just five days to put all of this together, is part of that energy. Blue and Lonesome is an absurd achievement that calls back to the early days of The Rolling Stones’ time together in more than just genre choice. You can hear the joys of this energy on Just Your Fool and Commit a Crime, the opening pair of songs that elicit the blues fundamentals. The Rolling Stones has not lost sight of their roots; they never truly did apart from that brief and brutal foray into pop-adjacent noise. But Blue and Lonesome highlights what Jagger and the band do best, lead the charge on instrumental blues structure and lonely hearts fighting off poisoned coffees and the fear of finding themselves redundant in their own life. Kitchen sink drama with the same swagger Jagger brought to the best of the band’s songs, this time applied to covers of all-time greats like Howlin’ Wolf.
Remove the ever-present want for nostalgia, and most of Blue and Lonesome stands up well alongside the band’s biggest hits. A title track which shakes off the lighter blues notion for a staggering, slowed tempo damnation of being blue and lonesome, and you have a thrilling early point for the rest of the album to draw energy from. They don’t keep the tempo the same, there are some slowed thrills highlighting the instrumental capabilities of Richards and Wood on All of Your Love, but the sentiment, the imagery conjured by the band, remains the same throughout Blue and Lonesome. What they hone in on is the instrumental breathing room, the moments which can develop into those sudden sparks of piano influence, or the improvisational-like style which is inherent to any successful blues piece.
Covers of the blues, just like the old days. It’s not enough of a nostalgia trip to reconnect with ardent fans, but it’s a reminder of what The Rolling Stones can do for the classics. Hearing veterans tackle music which inspired them feels like a bit of a free ticket to success, though the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney proved this isn’t always the case. Jagger grapples with the work of Little Walter, Magic Sam, and Willie Dixon remarkably well, and the rest of The Rolling Stones bring a thumping new life to the instrumental sections. I Gotta Go and Ride ‘Em On Down are great examples of that frenetic but tempered style the band has on Blue and Lonesome. Fans of the blues are catered to here, naturally, but so too are those who want to hear what The Rolling Stones can do as a clinical rock and roll group, in the same form as they were in their early years. Latter stages of the album, like Little Rain, are exceptional showcases of how strong a voice Jagger still has, how the band can still play through with a nuance that was lost on preceding releases.
