a nice comeback

After Mick Jagger's first solo album (she's the boss), after Dirty Work, the Stones got together and did a pretty good album.
Mixed Emotions and Rock and a Hard Place were the most immediate hits of that record. But they're not necessarily the best songs. Continental Drift is an expected piece from the Stones and one which testifies how broad they can be when they want to.
The best song in the album - recorded live in Stripped few years later and now a staple in most live performances by the Stones - is Slipping Away. It's a great great song. It's very basic and yet very intriguing. It's - possibly - a turning point in Keith Richards' songwriting. It opened a new line of songs -- Losing My Touch (in Forty Licks); The worst as well as thru and thru (voodoo lounge); thief in the night (bridges to babylon)--
that has expended the Stones'musical vocabulary.
It's a nice comeback.

The archetypal Stones album!

It's almost as if Mick Jagger and Keith Richards sat down and wrote the songs for this album thinking "what is it that people want from a Stones album?".

They apparently decided that people want both the rockers, the ballads, and perhaps a bit of modest experimentalism ("Continental Drift"), and that's what "Steel Wheels" provides.



It opens with two tough rockers, "Sad, Sad, Sad" and "Mixed Emotions", followed by the somewhat less remarkable "Terrifying" and "Hold On To Your Hat", and the nice, bluesy "Hearts For Sale".

"Blinded By Love" is a lovely melody, a folkish, acoustic ballad with Phil Beer (who worked with the Fairport Convention, Mike Oldfield and the Albion Band among others) playing mandolin.

Then comes one of the six (!) singles that were lifted off "Steel Wheels", the ever-so-slightly disco-influenced "Rock And A Hard Place".



Keith Richards supplies the groovy, muscular rocker "Can't Be Seen", which sounds like something off one of his solo albums, and the fine, soulful ballad "Almost Hear You Sigh" is actually a Keith Richards-number as well, although Mick Jagger sings it. Richards is playing a classical Velasquez guitar, and suddenly breaks into a magnificent, if too short, classical guitar solo.

And finally, after the very African-sounding "Continental Drift" and the so-so "Break The Spell", another ballad, this time with the lead vocal done by Keith Richards himself: "Slipping Away" is one of the best songs Richards has penned, lyrically and musically, and one of the best vocal tracks he and his whiskey-soaked pipes have laid down as well.



"Steel Wheels" feels a lot like Keith Richards' album, probably in part because Richards already had some more or less finished material to work with, and his influence means that "Steel Wheels" rocks with a lot more sincerity than the two or three records that preceded it.

It has a few lesser tracks, but nothing is terrible, and there is a lot of good stuff here as well - dense, powerful rock n' roll from the only band who can seriously lay claim to the title "the World's greatest rock band".

Very Solid Effort

This album is really quite good. Some people hate it, but in my opinion most of the songs are listenable and five are excellent. These standouts are Mixed Emotions, Hearts for Sale, Can't Be Seen, Rock and a Hard Place, and Continental Drift. Any album with five great songs should be highly regarded, and the rest of the songs certainly aren't bad. Overall, this album is a slight step below Tattoo You but it's leaps and bounds above other latter day Stones albums (like Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon). Stones fans should definitely get this.