STUDIO ALBUMS | LIVE ALBUMS | COMPILATIONS | BOX SETS | SINGLES | BOOTLEGS It is a happy irony that at least two of the central songs on this album are prime examples of their commitment to the now-resurgent notion of black pop primacy.The Rolling Stones – Discography (1964 – 2017)ĮAC/XLD Rip | 430xCD + 3xBD + 9xDVD | FLAC/WV Tracks & Image + Cue + Log | Full Scans Included There are numerous young performers in Britain today who are lauded for adopting the trappings of Tamla-Motown or the dance-tested beat of black disco and pop reggae, but the Stones have been covering this turf (and more originally, at that) for years. On Undercover, the music offers continuing proof of the band’s commitment to black music. One suspects the Stones wouldn’t approve of all this rummaging around in their lyrics - they’ve never bothered to pose as poets, and their words have always melded with the music quite well. And while it coexists here with the indomitable self-assertion of “Too Tough” (“But in the end, you spat me out/You could not chew me up”), it also achieves its most childlike expression in Keith Richards’ unadorned declaration of love and hope, “Wanna Hold You.” This admission of emotional vulnerability, so far removed from the usual phallic strutting of most hard rock, is a familiar theme from at least the last two Stones albums. Cool, just a snotty little fool” - and then slyly adds, “Like kids are now” - he sounds more self-aware than his detractors have ever given him credit for being. And in between the shout-along choruses of “All the Way Down,” where Jagger looks back on his beginnings and says, “I was king, Mr. Similarly, the black woman at the center of “She Was Hot” turns out to have been more than just a great lay - the simple sincerity of the singer’s “I hope we meet again” adds a sudden emotional resonance to what at first appears an empty-headed sex anthem - while the title of the sinuously slippery “Pretty Beat Up” refers not to the song’s female subject but to the singer’s condition since she left him. But the song isn’t simply about male domination of women it’s about the omnisexual oppressiveness of romantic obsession. When Jagger sings in “Tie You Up (The Pain of Love)” that “You get a rise from it/Feel the hot come dripping on your thighs from it,” and that “Women will die for it,” you might conclude that he’s just being provocative (or, alternatively, that he’s still the pathetic sexist asshole you always figured him for). Undercover is the most impressive of the albums the group has released since its mid-Seventies career slump (the others being Some Girls, Emotional Rescue and 1981’s remarkable Tattoo You) because, within the band’s R&B-based limits, it is the most consistently and energetically inventive. That the Stones are still capable of such exhilarating energy is cause enough for wondrous comment that they are able to sustain such musical force over the course of an entire LP is rather astonishing. With the guitars locked into a headlong riff and Mick Jagger hoarsely berating the woman who “screwed me down with kindness” and “suffocating love,” the track is already off to a hot start but then Charlie Watts comes barreling in on tom-toms and boots the tune onto a whole new level of gut-punching brilliance. There is a moment early on in “Too Tough,” a terrific song on the second side, that sums up all of the Stones’ extraordinary powers. Undercover is rock & roll without apologies. Here we have the world’s greatest rock & roll rhythm section putting out at maximum power the reeling, roller-derby guitars at full roar riffs that stick in the viscera, songs that seize the hips and even the heart a singer who sounds serious again. It is a perfect candidate for inclusion in a cultural time capsule: Should future generations wonder why the Stones endured so long at the very top of their field, this record offers just about every explanation. Undercover, their twenty-third album (not counting anthologies and outtakes), reassembles, in the manner of mature masters of every art, familiar elements into exciting new forms. By now, the Rolling Stones have assumed something of the status of the blues in popular music - a vital force beyond time and fashion.
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