while waiting for Charlie Watts to recover from treatment for throat cancer. Whether fueled by their notorious competitive camaraderie or inspired by their oldest mate's brush with mortality, the results sound like a genuine band effort -- loose, scrappy and alive. A Bigger Bang recalls the best things about rough, underrated Stones albums like Dirty Work or Emotional Rescue, though it's also impressively consistent.

The key here comes from surrendering to the groove. Most of the tracks are built around the incomparable spark that's lit when Keith's guitar and Charlie's drums lock into a rhythm. There's never been another team that can drive a band quite like these two, but on their post-Seventies work that magic has usually been buried in the mix. On hard-charging songs like "It Won't Take Long" or the rave-up single "Rough Justice," the Stones reassert themselves as the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band, and not just as the Greatest Show on Earth.

Mick and Keith have always said they want to grow old like the bluesmen they idolize, and on Bang they finally figure out how: The album revels in the Chuck Berry boogie and classic R&B pulse that's always been their lifeblood. The latter-day Glimmer Twins have often felt the need to coat their songs with layers of winking irony or studio gloss. Here, the dance-floor strut "Rain Fall Down" and the soul ballad "Laugh, I Nearly Died" are powerful because they're played straight, never turning cartoonish or mannered.

Jagger's voice throughout is a knockout, deeper and more forceful than seems possible after forty-plus years of rocking the mike. The subject matter on A Bigger Bang, though, is thankfully a bit less mature. The album mostly sticks to familiar, nasty Stones territory: being heartbroken and breaking hearts, the evils that women (and, sometimes, men) do. Maybe his palimony suit and much-publicized tabloid romances have given Mick some new fire -- the women on these songs have "burglarized my soul," "wipe the floor with me" and are "fucking up my life." Not that our boy is much better himself, confessing that "I took her for granted/I played with her mind" and -- leaving us to guess at the details -- "I was awful bad."

On "Dangerous Beauty," we return to the S&M underworld, as previously featured on "When the Whip Comes Down." The CNN-ready chart-buster "Sweet Neo Con" savages an unnamed