Cosmic America

The Rolling Stones last studio album? Can that really be? (The answer is yes, at least until the long-rumored 2020 album comes out). It's hard to believe we've finally gotten to this point.So we arrive here, and what do we find? A pretty good album overall! Very back-to-basics, especially considering the all-over-the-map approach that they took on Bridges to Babylon. The guest musicians and sidepeople are kept to a minimum, as are the producer and writer credits. Many of the tracks feature just the core band in the studio making music (and sometimes that just includes Mick, Keith, and Charlie). There's some good riffs, there's some good vocal melodies, and there are a couple of unexpected treats. There's also a larger amount of filler here, and this album ends up suffering from some of the mid-70s "we didn't really develop this idea very fully" problems that they'd mostly avoided on their last three releases. We evaluate this latest (and potentially last) Stones album track-by-track.