The three surviving members of the Rolling Stones attended a red-carpet event in Brooklyn on Tuesday to celebrate the launch of the band’s 25th studio album, “Foreign Tongues,” a follow-up to their Grammy-winning 2023 release. The 14-track collection will make its debut on July 10 as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood mark the 64th anniversary of the blues and R&B-rooted English rock band that became one of the world’s most successful, influential and enduring pop music acts.
The album cover, created by painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn, features a colourful, almost grotesque, three-in-one composite likeness of Jagger, Richards and Wood, their exaggerated, jumbled facial features assembled into a single disfigured portrait.
At an afternoon launch party held at the Weylin, a landmark special-events venue in New York City’s Brooklyn borough, the three Stones walked a red carpet, posed for pictures and submitted to an interview session with comedian and talk show host Conan O’Brien. The forthcoming arrival of “Foreign Tongues,” a title invoking the Stones’ distinctive lips-and-tongue logo, was preceded by Tuesday’s digital release of the album’s lead single, “In the Stars,” along with the album’s opening track “Rough and Twisted.”
“In the Stars” is due for physical distribution on May 15. Fans got a sneak peek of “Rough and Twisted” when it was given a limited vinyl-only release in April as a single credited to the Cockroaches, an old pseudonym for the Stones, to stoke buzz about the album as a whole.
‘RAUCOUS BLUES BELTER’ Neil McCormick, chief music critic for the Telegraph, called “Rough and Twisted” a “stomping, raucous, frayed and tattered blues belter” that would not sound out of place on the band’s seminal 1972 album “Exile on Main Street.”
“Foreign Tongues” marks the Stones’ second studio album since the 2021 death of drummer Charlie Watts and 25th set of new music since the band was founded in 1962 with a lineup that included Jagger as vocalist, Richards on guitar, and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, who died in 1969.
Watts and bassist Bill Wyman joined early on to round out the first stable roster of players billed as the Stones. Wood joined the group in the 1970s to replace then-departing rhythm guitarist Mick Taylor, and Wyman quit the band in the early 1990s.
The remaining core trio of Jagger, Richards and Wood reunited for 2023’s “Hackney Diamonds,” then the first album of original music from the Stones in 18 years and a collection that won the Grammy Award for best rock album. It was also noteworthy for containing some of the last studio work recorded by Watts, as well as the Stones’ first studio contributions from drummer Steve Jordan.
Jordan and bassist Darryl Jones comprise the rhythm section on “Foreign Tongues,” which also features a “special appearance” from Watts, according to the band’s promotional materials.
Other guest artists on the latest album include Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Robert Smith of The Cure, and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Speaking at Tuesday’s event, Jagger said the album’s producer, Andrew Watt, “was trying to get me together with Paul (McCartney) to write something, but we never actually did.” McCartney also played on “Hackney Diamonds,” with Watt overseeing that project as well. Despite the considerable rock-star mileage Jagger, 82, Richards, 82, and Wood, 78, have racked up, the Stones’ 25th studio release may not be the band’s swan song. British daily The Times’ chief rock and pop critic, Will Hodgkinson, reported in April that the band had amassed a stockpile of at least 10 more unused songs from their latest sessions as material for another album.
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