For the first time in seven years, there's new music from the Stones. They were spotted coming out of a Paris recording studio at the end of the summer, and now we know what they were doing in there. It's "Doom and Gloom."
The British music site NME ran this enthusiastic review, some of which doesn't make any sense because we're not British, but still:
That, fifty years into their career, they can come up with a song that opens like a mission from Dead Island (“Crash landed in the Louisiana swamp/Shot up a horde of zombies, but I come out on top”) and also unwittingly mimics Baldrick’s poetry (“when those drums go boom boom boom”) speaks volumes for their continued playfulness – they’re a pension-worthy band with the hearts and souls of petulant teenage freaks. That they go on to drop sly references to the Iraq invasion – “[i]lost all that treasure in an overseas war[i/]” – and social inequality is testament to their sophistication, and that the whole thing is wrapped up in a tune reminiscent of their peak period makes for a rare combination of wisdom and enthusiasm. It sounds like a ‘Gimme Shelter’ for Generation Wii.
Keef’s riffs are fresh as ever, Jagger yelps, claps and croons about getting hammered like he’s still living it up down the LSE bar and there’s a Zep-tastic breakdown that thankfully stops the whole thing sounding too much like Primal Scream’s ‘Rocks’ – a concept that would launch music into an inescapable loop of influence as confusing as a bad time travel plot. No, the first new Stones song in seven years is a revitalising reminder of what made them great in the first place, a tune that will sit seamlessly amongst their classics.
Meanwhile, the New York Times says some stuff which also doesn't make total sense because it's the New York Times:
Over the course of their career the Rolling Stones have revealed themselves to be a surprisingly neurotic band: keeping tallies of your nervous breakdowns, pleading to be given shelter and wondering – we’re just paraphrasing here – if they’d ever attain any measure of satisfaction in their lives. Now, on their first single in six years, and at an average age of 68 1/4, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts have declared, once and for all, that all is “Doom and Gloom.” . . . . . “Gloom and Doom” finds the Stones in classic, apocalyptic blues-rock-stomp mode, but with its contemporary references to shooting up hordes of zombies (and hydraulic fracturing), will it be their first track to find its way onto a trailer for “The Walking Dead”?
