Some Girls

This is a great CD put out by the most iconic rock band ever - so, what's not to like!!They never fail to hit the mark.The condition of the CD is as new and the delivery time perfect.

This was my very first Rolling Stones album and so it has a very nostalgic feel for me. It came out when I was 13 and was a 14th birthday present for me. I don't know what happened to that copy. I thought I would like to hear it again and felt that having on vinyl would be the ideal way to reacquaint myself with it.I must say that I registered very slight disappointment in the cover. Originally the outer cover had holes which only revealed the faces within when the inner sleeve was in place. On this version, there are not holes, just the photos permanently on the cover. I know it's a trivial point so I won't dwell on it.On the positive side, this is pressed on heavy duty vinyl, which is far better than the original copy I had nearly 40 years ago.So what of the music? This is an interesting album, which marked a return to form. I understand that the Stones were experiencing a decline in popularity during the 1970s and the music world was in thrall to disco and new wave/punk music. I think the band was canny enough to embrace these trends. The opening track, Miss You does certainly nod to disco and songs like Shattered and Respectable have a harder edged new wave feel to them.I have just played the album through twice and it has been an unalloyed pleasure. Every song is enjoyable and I am sure that I have enjoyed it more than I did when I last listened to it 30 years ago. I think that when I got to listen to their earlier songs, I didn't think that they were as accomplished on Some Girls. I am not sure of this opinion now. I now believe it is an exceptionally well played and executed album and I much prefer it the one that critics considers the greatest Stones album, Exile on Main Street, which I find hard to like.I like the three songs that are slightly less than the usual fayre. The country and western parody Girl with the faraway eyes is still funny. I loved the cover of the Smoky Robinson song, Just My Imagination and the Keith Richard song Before they make me run. He is not a great singer but the song evidently meant a lot to him, given that he was in grave danger of a long jail sentence for heroin use in Canada.This is an excellent album that I have loved getting to hear after all this time.

The Stones really hit the mark with this one, great playing, great production and great songs-even if they are a bit below the belt. It has everything that I like about the Stones in bucketloads. Keith and Ronnie make the ancient art of weaving sound as effortless as breathing. They really work as one on this one. Ronnies slide, Faraway Eyes, and lead guitar work really stands out. The Stones, for me, peaked with this one, followed closely by Tattoo You. Everyone is giving it 110%, playing Lies would exhaust a lot of modern "rock" bands.This album features a load of styles from the sly funky disco opener Miss You, through the smooth cover of Imagination, the rawk bluesy anthropological and educational(well not in the school sense) trawl through the wiles and ways of the worlds female population Some Girls, the punky and rocky Lies, the country hued sarcastic take on "gospel" radio Far Away Eyes, via others ending with the evocative description of the darker side of dwelling in New Yawk. Its all here! Magnificent degenerate rock music.The remaster is once again a touch up in the detail on previous releases, better drums, better vocal separation, better guitar separation, better guitar crunch and better bass definition. Not as immediately apparent a difference as the Sticky Fingers and Its Only Rock and Roll remastering, but an improvement none the less.Is it worth buying? If you are new to the Stones, definitely! If you have this on the Virgin release, yes if you want to hear every detail, no if you are just going to blast it on a portable.There are folk out there who like to feed the music through a wave editor to find out what is going on, this review is based on listening to the music on a couple of different cd players.

Some Girls is really the last great Stones album.Apart from their stunning début album, and the too often overlooked outstanding "Aftermath", albums hadn't really been the Stones thing for most of the sixties in the same way as they had been for the Beatles. All that changed with the run of 5 star excellence that spanned "Beggar's Banquet" to "Goat's Head Soup". (Yes folks, I do include that one). The presence of Mick Taylor had a lot to do with that."It's Only Rock n Roll" and, more notably, the jam session fuelled "Black and Blue", saw a change to the "feel" of their music. No longer sleazy, "from the hips". More rapid pumping from the wrists. Both fine albums, but some element of their former musicality was missing. The contrasting textures of Mick Taylor and Keith Richards were already becoming a thing of the past in the former album, and gone by the second. From now on, with the addition of Ronnie Wood and the loss of Taylor, they would instead have two riff merchants making the sound.The "Some Girls" album cover states "pardon our appearance we're under construction". And so they were. Re-construction. This is the band re-grouping and getting their act back together. Contributions from anyone outside the 5 members are minimal. (Rumour has it Ian Stewart walked out saying they now sounded too much like Status Quo). It's a great album. A fine balance between Jagger's desire to formally write the songs and Keith's penchant for getting a groove going and see what happens. Each member of the band positively shines. They will never feel quite so much like a band ever again.