The Rolling Stones: Black And Blue (COC)

IN THE FOUR years that have passed since the release of Exile On Main Street, perhaps their greatest album, The Stones have managed to put together only two LPs of new material, both minor compared to what they’d done before. Even so, there was a sense of adventure about Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll as The Stones headed up some previously unexplored side roads, all invariably leading toward a realism imbued with the pessimism of a diehard romantic struggling to find light in dark places. ‘Angie’ and ‘Winter’ presented one such side road, ‘Time Waits For No One’ and ‘Til The Next Time’ evoked another.