More guitar-centric and holistically Stonesy than their last outing, the latest from the world's greatest rock & roll band is built to satisfy
On “Divine Intervention,” a cheery song about ignoring the apocalypse from the Rolling Stones‘ upcoming 25th album, Mick Jagger confesses he once worried enough about end times to consult a Hollywood psychic. “Through the gloom I asked her what’s my future?/Well, she threw up,” he whines over Some Girls–style guitar boogie. Jagger’s message in the chorus is that even when the world is ending, “dystopian values are too hot to handle, and I’m going out in a blaze.” Now that’s more like it.
After all, the guy who sang both “Time Is on My Side” and “Time Waits for No One” — the guy who once said he’d rather be dead than sing “Satisfaction” at 45 — never seemed to care all that much about the future, anyway. Jagger, who will turn 83 shortly after the album’s July 10 release date, has always sung about living in the present. In the Sixties, when Paul McCartney was elegantly mourning a breakup on “Yesterday,” Jagger was hectoring “Yesterday’s Papers” at his ex. And where Macca’s excellent new album found him reminiscing about The Boys of Dungeon Lane, the Boys of Dartford Station are more interested in foreign affairs.
