They know where you can buy the fountain of youth.

Photo courtesy of the band

The Rolling Stones – "Foreign Tongues"

The Rolling Stones – "Foreign Tongues"

There must be a fountain of youth out there somewhere — and while I've long suspected it, now I know these guys have found it and aren't shy about using it. They've probably stashed a big supply in some bottle at Metropolis Studios, where by the sound of it, they had a blast. Because honestly: guys pushing past eighty, who by all rights should be settling into a rocking chair with a blanket over their knees, instead walk into a studio and lay down a record that hits harder than most twenty-somethings' debuts off the "Fresh Finds" playlist. "Foreign Tongues" is the best proof that age is just a number on your ID card if rock 'n' roll is still pumping through your veins — and not just rock 'n' roll ... but we won't get into that ;)

Let's start with what matters most, because there's no other way to open this: Mick Jagger's vocal condition, and beyond. It's genuinely hard to believe that a guy who's already clocked 83 years on this Earth still bursts with so much energy that today's twenty-somethings feel like they've already been retired for five years by comparison. Pure class, and even though he has nothing left to prove to anyone, he still shows everyone exactly who runs the rock firmament. Rock, blues, soul, disco — they're all still boiling away in his mind and body. Second is Steve Jordan, who is in no way inferior to Charlie Watts, and when it comes to groove, you could honestly argue he surpasses him. I know, I know — a few years ago that sentence would've gotten someone lynched on every fan forum out there. Watts was sacred, the metronomic heartbeat of this machine for half a century. And yet his successor plays with such ease that right from the opening "Rough and Twisted," it sounds more alive than anything the Stones have recorded in decades. This isn't imitating the master — it's more like "I'm rooting for you, but I'm doing this my own way, thanks Charlie."

The Stones' twenty-fifth album holds its own beautifully on plenty of fronts. "Rough and Twisted" is their classic muddy blues-rock, where Richards' and Wood's guitars chat with each other like an old married couple — after all, their duet has been running since "Some Girls" in 1978 and still has "it." "In the Stars" drifts toward more melodic, poppy territory reminiscent of the early eighties, while "Jealous Lover" is a surprisingly successful detour into soul and disco — Jagger pulls out his signature falsetto, almost Bee Gees-like, while Steve Winwood tinkers away on Rhodes and organ in the background; he actually puts his stamp on a good half of the album (supposedly nine of the fourteen tracks). Listening to some of these songs, I genuinely feel like I've been transported back to some summer-camp disco in 1986 :) The music feels fresh, the songwriting is a pleasure to listen to, the production is rich and juicy. In my opinion, they haven't put out anything this good since "Bridges to Babylon" back in 1997. One point that seems to rub "critics" the wrong way is the Amy Winehouse cover, "You Know I'm No Good." In my humble opinion, Jagger and the whole band did a great job with it, not flipping the song on its head but simply delivering it faithfully. I can also catch a bit of a Silk Sonic flirtation in some of the tracks, just in a somewhat harder-edged form. And as it turns out shortly, Bruno Mars himself has gotten tangled up somewhere in the credits of this excellent record too.

Honestly, there are so many guests on this record you could throw a whole festival with them. On "Divine Intervention," Robert Smith of The Cure plays guitar — Jagger later told an anecdote about running into "some guy in a long gown, covered head to toe in lipstick" in the studio, who turned out to be none other than the frontman of The Cure, and immediately invited him to play along. The effect is surprisingly subtle: if you didn't know he was there, you might miss his contribution entirely. Apparently Smith lent his guitar to one more track, though it was never officially revealed which one — a little mystery for the fans. I, for one, still haven't figured out where he shows up the second time.

On "Covered in You," none other than Sir Paul McCartney plays bass (a recording left over from the "Hackney Diamonds" sessions), while on the rambunctious "Never Wanna Lose You," Bruno Mars himself contributes cowbell — barely audible in the mix, which sounds like a great joke but is completely true. Hey Bruno! "Give me more cowbell" ;) Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers adds some organ color too. And on "Hit Me in the Head," we hear Charlie Watts, recorded shortly before his death in 2021 — a hard-driving rocker that plays like a farewell and a tribute all at once. The album closes with an acoustic version of Chuck Berry's "Beautiful Delilah," where Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers sits in on "concert bass drum" — a tender, intimate nod to the band's roots. Isn't that quite the colorful parade of guests? For me, it's a legendary-level treat.

Now for something for people like me — the ones who read the liner-note credits before the lyrics — because there's plenty to chew on here. The material was recorded in two locations: London's Metropolis Studios and Henson in Los Angeles, with sessions spread across several uneven waves — 2019, 2022–2023, and 2025–2026. Even so, the backbone of the record, ten of the fourteen tracks, was recorded at Metropolis in under a month. A month! From idea to finished recording. Some people spend that long agonizing over a song title in their perpetually-evaluating DAW on R ;)

Behind that pace is a philosophy they themselves dubbed the "bulldozer approach." Jagger explained it like this: they used to spend whole nights in the studio trying to "invent" songs that didn't actually exist yet, chewing every idea to mush until someone eventually said, "nah, that's not gonna work." This time around, they decided to skip all that — the bulldozer rolls in, records, and moves on, before anyone has time to overthink anything. Zero time for doubt, zero room for the bearded inner critic sitting in the corner of the studio (not talking about myself here). Anyone who knows me knows I've always lived by the "gut feeling" rule — the first idea is usually the best one.

Producing the record for the second time in a row is Andrew Watt (the same guy who won a Grammy for the Stones' previous album, "Hackney Diamonds"), who also got his hands dirty at the console as engineer, alongside Paul LaMalfa and Marco Sonzini. In an interview with The Telegraph, Watt revealed that this time he opted to capture the band playing live in the studio — because the Stones, as he put it, never play the same thing the same way twice, so the only sensible approach was to catch the best moments on the fly, moving with the rhythm of whatever was happening in the room. A practical extension of that bulldozer philosophy: instinct first, polish later (or not at all). And you can hear it! Honestly, listening to this record the first dozen or so times, I was almost certain it had been recorded "live, in one take" all the way through. It turns out that's not literally the case — not every track was captured in a single pass with zero overdubs (the way, say, parts of "Stripped" from 1995 were done live without overdubs) — but the philosophy is very close: freshness and first instinct over hours of fussing over a track. That's also why the album sounds so alive and "garage-y" despite Andrew Watt's polished, modern production. I fell for it.

Watt himself, no beating around the bush, admitted he likes "Foreign Tongues" even more than its predecessor — despite his sentimental attachment to "Hackney Diamonds," he described the new material as rawer, more live, and jammier, and called Richards' guitar parts on this record downright shocking, in a good way. Hard to blame him for the enthusiasm when the guy gets to go to work every day just to hear what Keith Richards comes up with next. And Keith, as always, works his magic with that unmistakable playing style and simply stunning tone.

This "capturing the moment" philosophy carries straight through into the mix. Most of the tracks were mixed by Serban Ghenea at his MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, with assistance from Bryce Bordone. The exception is the closing cover of "Beautiful Delilah," which Watt and LaMalfa mixed themselves — fitting, given its more intimate, stripped-back character. I'll also add, to wrap this up, that to my ears the record sounds "stadium-sized." As a listener, you get the sense of being at some huge event even though you're just sitting there with the album. It's not a heavy-handed effect either — the record is so drenched in space that you end up somewhere far beyond the room you're actually listening in. Randy Merrill tied it all together perfectly with his mastering.

You'll sometimes notice a fairly wide split in opinions about how the record sounds depending on the format: the vinyl gets praised for better dynamic balance and the ability to crank the volume without your ears hurting, while the CD version has been criticized for excessive compression and a certain harshness at higher volumes — a classic case of the "loudness war," something Watt's productions have always had a bit of a soft spot for. For me, that's not a weakness at all — everything sounds fantastic, and this record is a must-own on vinyl regardless. So you can blast the "loudness war" version in the car and savor the dynamics of the vinyl master at home.

Is this the Stones' final word? They don't know themselves, and honestly, I don't think they even care — the bulldozer keeps rolling as long as it's got fuel. And we all know what fuel that is, though it's long been established that sports are more dangerous than rock 'n' roll: Maradona's gone, and Richards and Jagger and Wood are still very much alive... and how! And if this really is a goodbye, it's hard to imagine a more fitting one. "Foreign Tongues" isn't just a solid postscript to "Hackney Diamonds" — in my opinion, it comfortably outdoes its predecessor and reminds you exactly why these guys have ruled the rock scene for sixty years, even if they really should've retired ages ago.

Simon Svoboda

Rating: fucking awesome