The Rolling Stones – In the Stars Review

The Rolling Stones are back and sounding better than ever on In the Stars, lead single of their twenty-sixth studio album, Foreign Tongues. The Mick Jagger-fronted group announced their Hackney Diamonds follow-up earlier today, but details leaked from here or there, and dedicated fans managed to put together a picture of what the band had in store for us. The Cockroaches are no more, the facade put on for Rough and Twisted, an excellent and punchy blues rock track of familiar but frightful quality, is territory The Rolling Stones conquered years ago. It sounds like a similar detail on In the Stars, a strong piece of work from the band that’ll give dedicated listeners much to think about. Where will Charlie Watts and Paul McCartney feature? Here? On another song? Who knows, at this point? All there is to note is that In the Stars is, as Rough and Twisted is, a phenomenal showcase of that blues-rock passion.  

Crucial to the thrills of In the Stars is not the familiarity of the blues style but how it still informs the band. It has pushed Jagger into a new direction. He makes the theme of luck feel like something feasible, a complete luck of the draw that feels as though it’s repeatable or achievable. That much just isn’t true, but there is a believability in the faith Jagger provides on In the Stars. A staggering vocal range on the man, who sounds as youthful and thrill-laden here as he has done for decades. But here, unlike on previous, inconsequential releases, it sounds as though he has a word or two worth listening to. Hackney Diamonds felt like a ham-fisted, feature compilation, while In the Stars and Rough and Twisted felt like a collection of music veterans coming together to see if they could pull new life from old meanings and sound. That they can, as evidenced by the brilliance of In the Stars. It has all the ooh’s, gambling, and starry-eyed notions of The Rolling Stones at their very best.  

But it does more than retread old ground. Instrumentally, the song is a masterstroke, with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood given time to wail away in that spectacular, Stones-like fashion. Upbeat, instrumentally well-layered, and consequential. The Rolling Stones at their best, which is a sound that the layman listener will not have heard for some time. A Bigger Bang had patches of this quality, but the crisp production, the clear route through and the turn of the card being the opening line, it all comes together marvellously. In the Stars is a phenomenally fun time with the band, with Jagger noting a sickness in the land. He plays out the spiel of dancing away the problems, fixating on desire over deliberations on what to do next. It works well for The Rolling Stones, and it feels like a worthy bit of escapism, too. There’s a balance between engaging with that positive, blues-rock flow, but also keeping in touch with the origins of the genre.  

Despondency hardly spreads across the piano-laden sounds of In the Stars, but there’s certainly a note or two of real thrills and joy. Everything comes together well. What fans expect of The Rolling Stones, namely some twitchy dance moves and ooh’s from Jagger, instrumental excess in the form of excitable guitar work from Richards and Wood, and a soft sense of hope, is all here. In the Stars gets better on every listen. On par with Rough and Twisted, a song that fans will no doubt want to get their hands on as soon as they can. Repeating the title of the track to close out the song, Richards flows through with some manic guitar playing before Wood brings about a focused, final riff, it sounds both like classic material from The Rolling Stones but a step towards a whole new sense of being for the band. They’re always an electric time, but that shock is still exciting.