Considering this is The Rolling Stones’ 25th studio album, it’s ironic that the first song you hear, “Rough and Twisted”, probably sounds closer to what the band wanted to sound like in 1962, when they were still a guttersnipe London R&B band, before they started borrowing songs from The Beatles and going all pop.
Produced by Andrew Watt, who also produced 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, Foreign Tongues features guest contributions from Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Chad Smith, the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers. It sounds to me that – once again – Watt has immersed himself in every major moment of the band’s everlasting oeuvre, and using his studio trickery, mixed himself up a big old pan of bespoke Stones gumbo.
The album has got great hooks, too, and while melodically it might not have enough instant classic earworms to keep you going to Christmas (honestly, did Black and Blue, did Emotional Rescue?), it’s a truly great Stones album. Seriously. The melodies might not be immediately obvious, but they creep up on you in a most pleasing way.
A lot of Foreign Tongues sounds quite punky, and you could be forgiven for thinking that this is the counterfactual album the band might have made in 1978, after the onslaught of The Clash, The Jam and Sex Pistols. But all that does is give it a sense of rather wonderful urgency, and a genuine feeling of 2026 relevancy. My current favourite is the fifth song, “Divine Intervention”, which sounds like a week-long party strapped to the front of a very fast car.
