![]() Never ones to be self-deprecating, they’ve translated that feeling into global terms. Still, judging by Emotional Rescue‘s language, the Rolling Stones - Jagger and Richards at least - are feeling as vulnerable as zombies can. Indeed, so much of this record is obsessed with having and not having that the rescue operation ostensibly taking place seems like it should be aimed at those whose emotions were exchanged for hard currency long ago. 1)” pauses in mid-boogie for a couple of rich-man/poor-man jokes. Even the blandly funky, mostly instrumental “Dance (Pt. “Summer Romance” - a you’ve-heard-it-before, snot-nosed schoolgirl version of “Maggie May” - starts out randy and ends up simply insolvent: “I need money so bad/I can’t be your mama/I don’t want to be your dad.” In “Emotional Rescue,” the distress that the waiting damsel feels is strictly financial (“… you can’t get out/You’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house”). ![]() After nearly eighteen years of well-paid nights and approximately twenty-seven albums of acted out desires, maybe these guys can’t help getting lust and cash confused. “I will be your knight in shining armor,” he intones at the end of the title track, sounding like a high-priced fantasy gigolo gone silly with the strain. But when Mick Jagger is desperate enough to mail-order lovers wholesale, you can’t help but wonder who’s supposed to be rescuing whom. If the Stones have adopted a gentlemanly attitude these days, their prime concerns - sex and money - are the proletariat’s, too. Mick Jagger Pays Tribute to Late Bandmate Charlie Watts: 'Thinking of Charlie Today' But you know as well as I do that nobody talks about the musical innovations on a Stones or Dylan record unless the artists themselves have run out of things to say. Mick Jagger sings in falsetto, someone who sounds like a bad Bob Dylan (my God, it’s Keith Richards!) takes a snuffling lead vocal and special guest Max Romeo does a bird chant. Still, the Stones’ sound is so identifiable that it’s hard to remember how carefully they’ve developed it: the just-shrillenough blend of harmonica and sax, the similarly gruff treble in their forced high harmonies. 1),” but there are plenty of rooms available at the current memory motel. I’d rather be reminded of Between the Buttons by the venal, high-speed whine of “She’s So Cold” than revisit “Miss You” outtakes by way of the interminable “Dance (Pt. There’s hardly a melody here you haven’t heard from the Stones before. As far as the music goes, familiar is an understatement. High-contrast patterns of familiar outlines and blackened patches where the heat has burned and gone, these photographs - like pictures of corpses from some holocaust - are practically unrecognizable. And, finally, for the album's closer, we find Imaad Wasif delivering a solo number that shares an affinity and enthusiasm with the KRS track and I realize I shouldn't have pinned so much expectation on a band I had never really heard.Like the thermographic photos of the Rolling Stones on the album cover, Emotional Rescue is a portfolio of burned-out cases and fire trails. The album does have a few moments, however, like the ones on "Krystal Korpse," the beginning of "Real is Your Control," and "The Light," where they allow room for the lyrics and vocals to breath. Different music for the lyrics or different lyrics for the music and we might have something. These are meditative lyrics with a rock & roll background, and the two do not fit. Kind of like throwing lessons of existentialism on the inside of Joe Blow wrappers. High hopes, eh? The depth and emotion are still prevalent throughout the record, but the rock does not fit the vocals and the two seem somewhat awkward together. ![]() I vaguely obsessed over finding an Alaska! album in the following months and, nearly a year later, Rescue Through Tomahawk comes across as somewhat disappointing. Deep, very well written, and quite beautiful to the ear, I hadn't heard such emotive singing for quite some time. ![]() The track itself was an acoustic number, strictly acoustic, of which the content hit quite close to home. At least I thought it was a they (and I actually thought the they was a he). My infatuation with Alaska! started with a track they had contributed to a KRS comp about a year back.
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