Every new Rolling Stones album is preceded by a media blitz claiming that it's the return to form we've all been waiting for. They should actually call their next album The Return to Form We've All Been Waiting For. That might break the spell for those of clinging to the hope that it might still happen. It won't, it can't, and the moment when it might have happened passed 25 years ago. It doesn't matter anyway. A Bigger Bang finds the band on the upswing and there's at least two-thirds of a real good Stones album inside its (too long) 64 minutes. "Rough Justice" makes for a great start. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have finally found a chorus for "You Got Me Rocking", and it comes as a great relief. "Rain Fall Down" rethinks "Undercover of the Night" without the violent, clattering production and percussion overload. "Laugh, I Nearly Died" steals back some of the cold-blooded soul they nailed around the time of Goat's Head Soup and Jagger seems to shed a few decades. On that note, his Lordship tosses off some rude and funny lyrics throughout and his harp-playing on A Bigger Bang is more vital than ever. In the end, the quality of each track lies in the era it mimics. Consequently, "Streets of Love" is simpering cack in the vein of "Saint of Me", while "Back of My Hand" is "You Gotta Move" and therefore wonderful. "She Saw Me Coming" is any number of tracks from Some Girls. Hallelujah! "Sweet Neo Con" is the album's talking point. It's useless as a song, but you're unlikely to hear so direct an attack on BushCo from elsewhere in the mainstream, even if it is submitted by a satyric sexagenarian multimillionaire. Keef gives us the album closer, "Infamy", whose chorus lifts a punch line from Carry On Cleo, meaning that we still don't know where the fuck his head is at.

Georgia Straight, September 2005