Foreign Tongues      Artist: Rolling StonesLabel: PolydorOne of the more striking moments during the Rolling Stones’ concert at Croke Park, in Dublin, in May 2018 was when Mick Jagger belted out Gimme Shelter while the giant video screens behind flashed violent imagery from 1960s civil-rights marches in the United States: police rushing protesters, batons flashing, barking dogs straining on their leashes.It was an electrifying twist to a night that had until then bounced from one jukebox moment to the next. We think of the Stones as rock’s ever-virile headbanging pensioners – bad-boy yin to The Beatles’ squeaky-clean yang.To be reminded of their secret history as purveyors of generationally great protest rock came as a bolt from the great beyond, as it does all over again on Foreign Tongues, their freewheeling, frisky, occasionally fabulous new album.With Gimme Shelter, the Stones captured the sense of claustrophobic doom that was in the air as the Vietnam War metastasised and the hippie dream curdled. An entire lifetime later, on their 25th studio LP, a similar feeling of dread hangs thick and low – and the band are quick to identify the US as ground zero for the malaise.“Lady Liberty don’t look so good when there’s a tear in her gown,” Jagger – now an octogenarian – howls on the sauntering blues ballad Ringing Hollow, on which, as with that Croke Park show, there’s a telling contrast between the balmy framing (the song sounds like one long whistle of contentment) and the gearshift into politics. The truth-talking doesn’t end there: on the boogie-woogie rumble of Mr Charm he propositions a love interest by suggesting he show her his collection of first World War paraphernalia (not a euphemism) and then says his offer is a whole lot better than rocking into space with the “mad mogul Mr Musk”.Jagger doesn’t take the preaching any further – whatever Foreign Tongues is, it isn’t the second coming of Bob Dylan or Kneecap – but even when he isn’t flinging mud at the world’s first trillionaire, Foreign Tongues crackles with irreverence, its cheeky energy amplified by its producer, Andrew Watt (who worked similar wonders on Hackney Diamonds, the Rolling Stones’ 2023 album, and on Paul McCartney’s recent Boys of Dungeon Lane).With Jagger and Keith Richards both 82 and Ronnie Wood not far behind, at 79, the Stones are at a point in their lives when it’s traditional for songwriters to turn mournful and melancholic, to wonder if this is all there is and whether any of it was ever really worthwhile. But that sort of wee-hours ennui is of no interest to Jagger and Richards, rockers who continue to live in the moment and whose music is defined by inexhaustible quantities of derring-do: they make growing old sound like the best fun ever, and there’s a sense of long-distance runners who have burst into one final sprint. Hello groovy shoes day.Their joie-de-vivre proves infectious across a project chock-full of cameos. McCartney is reeled in to play bass on the bushy-tailed Covered in You; Steve Winwood contributes organs to the delicious funk groover Jealous Lover; Robert Smith of The Cure embraces the boys-mucking-about-in-the-studio spirit as he chimes in with backing vocals and synths on Divine Intervention and Never Wanna Lose You, respectively. None of these guest spots wears out his welcome. They certainly don’t overshadow the main-character swagger of Jagger and Richards, aided by their new drummer, Steve Jordan, replacing the late Charlie Watts (who did contribute to one final track: the pell-mell, almost punk-rock Hit Me in the Head).The Stones don’t reinvent the wheel across this engaging attempt at replicating the classic crowd-pleasing energy of Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers, but they do keep it spinning. At a stage when other artists obsesses over legacy and the meaning of it all, they turn away from such weighty themes and do what they’ve always done. They make the blues sound frisky, timeless and wholly immune to the indignities of age. That they purse their lips and waggle their tongues at Elon Musk is just a bonus.Foreign Tongues is released on Friday, July 10th