unrecognizable. As far as the music goes,
familiar is an understatement. There's hardly a melody here you haven't heard from the Stones before. but then that's nothing new. Me. 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. 1)," but there are plenty of rooms available at the current memory motel.
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. And I should tell you about the changes. 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. 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.
One thing's for sure: Emotional Rescue isn't the news-break that 1978's Some Girls was. The Rolling Stones haven't suddenly gone salsa (in spite of some south-of-the-border horns). Old hands haven't stepped out of early retirement to show cocky young punks exactly how best to offend, and radio censors won't have a case. In place of the ethnic and sexual slurs of the earlier LP's title tune (meant, I've always thought, as a sendup of liberal etiquette), Emotional Rescue extends an open invitation to foreigners: "She could be Roumanian/She could be Bulgarian/She could be Albanian.../Send her to me."
If the Stones have adopted a gentlemanly attitude these days, their prime concerns–sex and money – are the proletariat's, too. 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. At least he has fun with the idea. "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. 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.
"Summer Romance" – a you've-heard-it-before, snotnosed 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 ou
