Exile on Main St.

meh

Classic Stones material!!

How incredibly boring

I’ve never been keen on The Rolling Stones—I recognize their influence and they had a handful of songs that I do like, but overall, I’ve generally found them irritating and overrated.

But Exile on Main Street is a genuinely excellent album. I think it’s partly because Jagger’s voice is nestled in a choir, which is both effective, cohesive, and an excellent veil for his voice’s less-desirable tendencies. I didn’t mind the album’s length, which is worth something from a band I don’t really like.

I expected this not to totally live up the the hype but it does. I’m not sure I can handle a full album (any album) without getting tired of Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger, but otherwise this was a great blues rock record. I’m sure it’s directly influenced almost all of the music I really like.

The music on this album is relatively enjoyable, if a bot too samey. My problem is that I dont really like Mick’s vocals. For odd songs it’s fine, but sustained over the full one hour plus its just horrific. His vocals also feel a bit too low in the mix for a lit of the album, which actually makes them worse.
I generally like a good bit of sax in songs but not so when they pipe up a lot of the time here (‘Happy’ being an exception).
Overall it’s probably a 2.5 but it’s not strong enough for a 3

I just don't really get The Rolling Stones. I am still not a big fan of Jagger's voice, I hate that so many things just seem to end in a long jam session, and the whole thing just seems to last forever. The brass I like because I like the sound of brass instruments, but I just don't find this particularly interesting as an album.

I think I gave the previous Stones album the generator provided a 3, and while I don't think this is that much better or worse, averaging the two out to a 2.5 seems appropriate, so:

2/5

4.5
It's long but doesn't seem as long as it, surprisingly few hits but some really great songs

Finally, after nearly two years, I get my second Stones record on my album journey! Here I thought I was gonna finish the Beatles before that happened. Anyway...

Exile on Main St. gets a lot of notoriety in the Rolling Stones' catalog. Not only was this the band's first double album, but the recording process was particularly messy. They had spent the money that they owed in taxes to the British government, prompting them to leave their home country to avoid seizure of their assets. Keith Richards rented out a villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, where the band set up a makeshift recording studio in the basement, working all night and all day. As if that weren't enough, heroin was abundant during their stay, which proved to be disruptive, especially for Keith, as it became a drug habit for him. Tensions arose between band members who indulged in drugs and those who abstained from them. After some time, the basic tracks were brought over to Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, where overdubs were added, and Mick Jagger took charge at this stage. After all the turmoil, it's amazing that this record turned out as good as it did.

Across two discs, the Stones run through a smattering of rock and roll, Delta blues, soul, gospel, and country - the most American-sounding that these Brits have been. Side one alone showcases this variety, firing on all cylinders with the hard-hitting ode to that heroin on "Rocks Off", the rockabilly swagger of "Rip This Joint", the earnest cover of Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips", the country-rooted slowburn of "Casino Boogie", and the tribute to gambling on the grooving "Tumbling Dice", complete with a call-and-response outro. Mick Jagger commands the mic with his Southern-esque drawl amidst the assorted backup vocalists. The instrumentation of this record is anchored by the well-influenced guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, and the purposeful brass arrangements from Bobby Keys and Jim Price. I was certainly into this musical palette across other tracks like the barroom country swing of "Sweet Virginia", the piano-driven soulful bliss of "Loving Cup", Keith Richards's twisted jaunty number "Happy", the harmonica-infused fast-paced blues of "Turd on the Run", the swampy gospel of "I Just Want to See His Face", the rocking opener of side four "All Down the Line", and the anthemic penultimate organ-driven chant of "Shine a Light".

But somewhere along the way, I realized that this album could have been trimmed down a bit. I have the sneaking suspicion that by the time they got done with recording, the band and producer Jimmy Miller were burnt out and ended up throwing as many tracks together without thinking about the structure of this record. That does leave me feeling there could have been some cuts and rearranging of tracks, especially in comparison to the more succinct Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers. I look back on tracks like the twangy country rock of "Torn and Frayed", the lowly slide guitar stomp of "Ventilator Blues", the fervent gospel singing of "Let It Loose", and the decent cover of Robert Johnson's "Stop Breaking Down", and while I didn't hate them, I feel that they add to this repetitive nature as the album kept going. At the very least, "Shine a Light" should have closed out the album instead of another by-the-numbers rocker in "Soul Survivor". Also, for as much as "Sweet Black Angel" was well intentioned in advocating for racial equality after being inspired by civil rights activist Angela Davis, the execution leaves a lot to be desired as the band opted for this backward-looking country-blues track with a West Indian rhythm, as Mick Jagger laid it thick with this Caribbean-esque accent, and he also dropped the n-word on a line. As such, the song winds up being an unfortunate byproduct of its time, and unlike "Brown Sugar" off the preceding album, it couldn't hide that fact behind an infectious hook.

All in all, Exile on Main St. is an enjoyable yet flawed record that represented the Rolling Stones' strengths alongside their lows. Truly an album that would have come out of being drawn away from home and into the throes of excess and exhaustion.

This is so fucking boring. I feel like I'm missing something because this is such a highly regarded album but I didn't get a whole lot out of most of the songs on here. There's some exceptions of course, I loved Tumbling Dice and Rocks Off and 1 or 2 others too, but everything else just kinda went in one ear and out the other.

I always felt like the stones were over-emulating blues to the point of making a bit of a joke of it. Like, their fans weren't in on the joke. I will say there's some great tracks on here but I can't shake the feeling and I have definitely listened to some stones as my close friend has ever been a massive fan.

Peak Stones. Perfect rock n' roll sleaze. This record is so perfect that it's a miracle Liz Phair's response record is even better.

Yet another album of the Stones revisiting blues. It's nice and cool but once again it's not exactly my kind of stuff.

Favorite Songs: Shake Your Hips ;

All fine enough, but little in here I can grab on to. And I've tried so many times. Just blends into the background in a harmless way, which I'm pretty sure is not the intention.

you can critique this for its appropriation sure but man, it's stacked and then some. the stones seem to have been forgotten from the conversation in recent years (there was still a big Beatles Vs Stones battle when I was younger which has seemingly completely died out) but this is as good an album as you'll ever hear

I’ve never really got The Stones. There’s songs that I do enjoy if I hear them but they’ve never been a band that I will go out of my way to listen to.

This one’s getting a 4 but it’s on the low end of my 4’s. It’s really good and I did like it but I don’t think I will go back to it.

This album is way too long and half the songs sound the same. The music is otherwise fine, but nothing stands out as great to me. Cut five tracks at random from this and its probably a 3.

holy shot does every rolling stones song sound exactly the same?

It's okay, but that's about as far as I'd go.

For a group as overwhelming as the Rolling Stones, I was expecting... more?