Rating 9.2
Summary The most necessary unnecessary album of the year.

For all the Rolling Stones have accomplished, and that list is as extensive as the items Keith Richards has personally injested, none is more impressive than what Scorsese's Shine A Light makes clear: the Stones are outliving and outperforming their critics and chroniclers.

Their peers had the good sense to be canonized: The Beatles went out in ego and flames, Dylan went reclusive - but the Stones, the goddamn Stones, they just stick around, front and center, having the best damn time of them all.

It makes for a boring story - but for one hell of a good show.

As a critic, the Stones are maddening. Through sheer longevity they wring cliche like water from stone, through sheer virility they beg rhetoric - "What more can be said?", "Where does one begin?" - and in doing so leave their detractors (and their worshippers) impotent. The Stones don't need you, they don't need me - they don't need the music and music doesn't need them. There is no symbiotic relationship - only perfect unity. And if that seems a little dramatic, just listen to Jumping Jack Flash - it's impossible for that song not to exist, and seemly impossible that it can still sound so good, so relevant, and so alive.

When you're dealing with the Stones, you're not dealing with a band or a song or a performance - you're dealing with a fact of life. Like sex or death or pain. Only...minus the death in the Rolling Stones' case. And probably 3 times the sex.

So there's an album here from the film Shine A Light. It's full of well-trod songs. These songs sound good. But why does it exist? The only thing more timeless than music is making a buck, so is it simply that? If you love the Rolling Stones, why bother? If you've never heard the Rolling Stones (and sad to say a majority of music listeners out there probably haven't...sorry guys) why care?

The answer is simple: These songs have existed in infinite varieties for ages, but never has the world needed them more. The song that exists metaphysically on your cd or vinyl or harddrive isn't nearly as important as the version Mick is somewhere this very instant generating from baser elements - transmuting from oxygen and swagger - and Shine A Light is your closest circuit to that raw intimacy.

The album is aptly named - as you listen, little lights are constantly going off in your head - little blips of understanding. Never has the inescapable relation of Blues to Rock (and basically everything else) been so clear. Never has Mick Jagger's desperate attempts to be a bona fide' bluesman been so heartrending because it matches our own desire to truly know pain as much as avoid it. Never has the lived in voice of Keith Richards seemed so authentic - despite his recent pop-culture ubiquity. And with the inclusion of pivotal guest stars (an starstruck Jack White, a stripped down Christina Aguilera, an impossibly raw Buddy Guy), never has the eternal nature of music itself been so clear - the Stones are but a Universe inside a Universe and so on forever in both directions.

The Stones are not the best band of all time. They're not the best band today. Every success includes an embarrassing misstep. But the Stones of today are not the Stones that made "Black and Blue". One of the critical factors to the Stones remaining a contender in the eternal Greatest Of All Time is their misteps. One step forward, two steps back just means you do alot more walkin' to get where you're going and less circles when you get there. The Beatles may have been more technically perfect - but it's the earthier Stones still in the business of shaking the floorboards.

As the poster boys for late night one-liners about overstaying one's welcome or performing well past your use-by date, Mick Jagger and company - though the purveyors of the truest bluest rock and roll - have made the ultimate stick-it-to-the-man punk move by not doing anything at all - they just keep going.

With a collective age of 255 years, how that's even possible truly boggles the mind, but some type of pact with unholy Satan is probably the best guess.

Bonus Treat

A game my friends and I indulge in is "Beatles Vs. Stones". Check out the examples below and feel free to leave your own in the comments.

The Beatles are lawn bowling The Stones are ten-pin.

Beatles: Leonardo da Vinci. The Stones: Van Gogh.

Beatles: Tom Hanks Stones: Johnny Depp

Beatles: Thomas Jefferson Stones: Andrew Jackson

Beatles: Jeff Gordon Stones: Dale Earnhardt

Beatles: Michael Jordan Stones: Charles Barkley

Beatles: Martin Luther King Stones: Malcolm X

Beatles: Paul McCartney Stones: John Lennon

Beatles: Zack Morris Stones: A.C. Slater

Beatles: Bill Nye the Science Guy Stones: Beakman's World

Beatles: Doug Stones: Rugrats

Beatles: Luke Skywalker Stones: Han Solo

Beatles: Betty Stones: Veronica

Beatles: McDonalds Stones: Burger King

Beatles: Superman Stones: Batman

Thanks to Client #9 over at the AV club for alot of these

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rating 7.3
summary Gypsy strange-mongers Man Man return with more songs; less mindless shouting. That should be a good thing...right?

This two person review is by Ethan E. and Sage Turk

EE: Well, i'm honored the great William Shakespeare has asked me to help do a review.

ST: What's that supposed to mean? Oh..right...my last review. Shakespeare never wrote southern influenced short stories based on an album's titles and content..ok?

EE: Whatever...what's next? a collection of poetry? haiku?

ST: If haiku I spoke
would nincompoop ethan know?
a numbskull he is.

EE: stop. just stop. besides, that's more Yoda than haiku.

ST: well, you have nothing to fear...my literary purge has left a gaping hole that can only be filled by your cheetoh's powdered observations.

EE: So, today we're checking out Man Man's newest album.

ST: Which is called Rabbit Habbits - a familiar title that only solidifies my theory that Man Man are essentially Animal Collective in gypsy drag.

EE: Hmm... you may have something there. We've never seen them in the same place at the same time - they both have ridiculous stage names - Panda Bear, Critter Crat, Honus Honus, Geologist, Pow Pow, Chang Wang....i wish I were making these up...

ST: And they're both following the same general accessibility curve - early records that are almost impregnably obtuse, later albums more approachable and more interested in actual songs than just noise.

EE: ah..but then there's the difference my friend. AC's Strawberry Jam record was a folding in of themselves, a condensing of their own sound that while infinitely more concise and listenable was, still, all their own. To me, Man Man are more borrowers - stealing other genre's babies in true gypsy fashion and raising them as their own.

ST: Really, Gypsies steal babies and raise them as their own? That seems a little racist....or....what would it be.....gypsyist...

EE: Hmm..maybe i'm thinking Carnival Workers.... anyway, someone out there has had their musical baby stolen and now Man Man have dressed him up like a little russian dancer and taught him how to play the Tuba.

ST: But that's always been Man Man's appeal - wondering what they were gonna do next, because no matter the veneer of familiarity, they're pretty much guaranteed to zig when you expect a zag. And they do just that on this latest album. There's a B-52's influenced dance number "Hurly/Burly", the tribal influenced "Harpoon Fever", the wobbly electro-rock of "El Azteca", a poodle skirt wearing Doo Wop ditty - "Doo Right" and the most impressive xylophone solo of the year on "Ballad of Butter Beans". And as much as the sickly sweetness of some of those influences may make you groan, the stretched shouting/weirdness of Honus Honus adds just enough sour texture to keep things interesting.

EE: And while they certainly keep things interesting....this album made me wonder if Man Man aren't just Ween in those tall fur hats. Not that I'm complaining per se...it's just to me, in earlier records and at live shows, Man Man seemed to inhabit their own plane of weird existence...and if something crept in that sounded familiar or even tuneful it was more like a passing alien observance. To enjoy a band like Man Man, you have to believe that they know what they're doing...even if you don't. And as entertaining as this album is, it kind of grounds things a bit. The experimental stuff seems less powerful and...well....just that - experimenting. No real purpose, just messing around.
That worries me. What if ALL the weird stuff in Man Man's past albums that I liked was just coincidence?

ST: I see what you are saying...and it's probably true. But I don't think when a band like Man Man starts to become more mainstream (and that term is being stretched here to its limit) and craft more "songs" it means that there isn't a Santa Claus. Some of their earlier stuff simply didn't work...and I see them here trying to stick closer to the stuff that does...and as such, we get an album that's more cohesive - which has it's obvious pros and cons. Less surprises, more consistent goodness. And here, that consistency is fun...I listen to this album as a trip through Pinocchio's Pleasure Island...full of carnivals and chaos and forbidden delights.

EE: I guess that's it...Man Man used to frighten as much as excite....now both have melted away some for a more stable listening experience.

ST: And either that's the best thing you could hope for Man Man, or the worst....you be the judge.

EE: You know what they say, "A beast without his fangs can still hump you."

ST: right. wait what?

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