Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones (Deluxe Edition Reissue)

In 1972, The Rolling Stones were already a veteran band with eight years of experience and a dozen records behind them. While they had always been overshadowed by the Beatles in the sixties, the breakup of that group allowed the Stones to develop artistically on their own and produce some of the greatest records that the worlds ever seen. Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers were towering achievements of modern riffage, blues reinvention, and the playful hedonism that has both informed and tarnished the band’s reputation. But even with those masterpieces and era-defining songs like “Satisfaction” and “Gimme Shelter” to hang on their mantle, Exile on Main St. was a revelation. It stood apart in sound and technique from any other work the band made previous, and has served as the archetypal rock and roll record ever since.

Dense and dirty, this record takes multiple spins before the chaos of its grungy production gives way to the order of the songs, the soaring interplay of the guitars, and the bands genius rhythm section. Mick Jagger is at his most acidic on “Rip This Joint” and his most tender on “Shine A Lights” broken-down reverie (for this band tenderness and broken-downiness are the same). Enough has been said about this record that I can only add personal superlatives to the records sterling reputation. I never believed in this band, until this album, and suddenly it all made sense to me. I preferred the slickness of The Beatles and mistook Mick and Keith’s avant- layering of rhythms and tones to be lazy production, but The Beatles never made a record as primally satisfying as this one and they never really made one that stood as a unified whole quite the way these 18 songs ebb and flow against each other. If the sound hear has been cleaned up, it’s not as revolutionary as the treatment of The Beatles catalogue last year, but this record isn’t supposed to sound smooth and digitized, it’s supposed to crack and hiss and move like the notes are coming at you for the first time every time you play it. The deluxe edition has notable bonus material on the second disk (the Richards-sung version of “Soul Survivor” is a keeper for sure), but it’s the original album that stands as a monument to the best rock band of them all. One of the ten best ever made. 5/5