Review: The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street (Reissue)

So the Rolling Stones have finally gotten around to remastering Exile on Main Street. Maybe it’s not their best album (you could probably start a melee around which of their 1968-1972 albums is their best; I’m partial to Let It Bleed), but it’s certainly their most celebrated and storied. There’s something inherently Rolling Stones-like in their idea of being accused of tax evasion, holing up in a French chateau, fueling up in drugs, and recording an album at first seen as a disappointment whose stature grew over time. It makes sense, then, that while their post-ABCKO catalog would get pretty much spilled into stores after a remaster, Exile would be special. Exile would be hyped. It’d get a music video on the internet. Exile would get Mick Jagger onto Larry King. Its outtakes would not only get a release (a big deal in itself), but the band would overdub the songs, do their best to make the leftovers live up. For Exile on Main Street, they’ll bring in Mick Taylor to touch up the outtakes.

First, the original album: it sounds great. These songs are classics. Maybe not individually, but as a whole they make up one of the great double albums, period. The remastered sound is cleaner than the previous CD, which already sounded fine to my ears (it was my first Stones CD though, so, I might just be used to it). One could argue that it’s too clean; that improving the fidelity strips some of the bottomed-out worldliness of the music. But, for me, it sounds like a matter of opinion. The new mix don’t decimate the charms of the original (see: The Book of Stooges, Chapter Raw Power). It’s different, but different doesn’t mean better or worse in this case. Everything is clearer, a little louder, and if some of the grit suffers because of it, at least it’s easier to appreciate individual instruments on this version. The best summary I can come up with: maybe I’ll stick with the vinyl, but I’ll be proud to have this version on my iPod, where I listen to my music most often.

Of course, the big news here is the disc of rarities. Surprisingly, they stand up with the proper album. They don’t match it, but they fit, overdubs and all. Most notably of all, they split the balance between being just plain great songs and being insightful into the band’s process. It opens with “Pass the Wine” and “Plundered My Soul” – a fantastic one-two punch that blows most of their work immediately after Exile out of the water. Mick Jagger’s voice has changed over the years, become more disciplined, a little deeper, but miraculously, it blends in pretty well with the old material. You can tell when a song is overdubbed if you try, but it’s not obvious. So, the disc as a whole sounds fine in terms of time and place, and all the unearthed songs sound like they were thought out rather than tacked on. Then again,  most new Rolling Stones music is still good music (give A Bigger Bang a listen if you disagree).

True to any time that unearthed material gets a proper release, the alternates are never going to supplant the versions that got released. They’re more of interest for collectors than anything. Keith Richards’s turn on lead on an alternate version of “Soul Survivor” might be the most notable of the bunch: his weariness reeks of the same honesty that characterizes all of his turns at the mic. It stands in stark contrast with the determination of the familiar Mick-sung version.  Similarly, “Loving Cup” isn’t better when brought down to a slow haphazard thump, but it’s still charming if not powerfully romantic. So, that “Following the River” is one of the better Stones ballads since the early 80s is welcome, even if its strings are a bit out of place following Exile‘s gritty blues workouts, the new songs make this set worth having.

In short, get this album. Get the one disc version if you haven’t got it already. Get the one with rarities if you already love it. Maybe the remaster job doesn’t completely justify putting it all out again (and it most certainly doesn’t justify the $140 version with a DVD, vinyl, what the fuck ever else is in that thing, says the guy who spent like $120 for an extra CD of Bob Dylan outtakes two years ago), but the album itself is a classic with a legend at its back, and that means its rerelease is deserving of celebration. On those grounds, The Rolling Stones did this one right.

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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!

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