Burn These "Bridges"!

I finally did it!

After owning the album for all these years, at last I was able to sit through the Stones' Bridges To Babylon from start to finish!

Part of the problem with the album is that it's just too long. It's nice that the digital CD medium allows for 61 minutes of music (never coulda got that much on an LP), but the sad truth is that there's barely 25 minutes worth of decent songs here (and the keyword is "decent", since none of these tracks measure up to the Stones' better material).
That's somewhat harsh, I suppose, since it's always entertaining to listen to Keith Richards' guitar ideas, and there are many good ones here. Still, that hardly makes up for Jagger's over-wrought vocals and the slew of cheesy, half-baked lyrics. There's something very creepy about a man his age singing, "Might as well get juiced". Yeah, go ahead and get juiced, Mickey. After all these years that's the best course of action your acquired wisdom can offer? Life must REALLY be worth living, eh?

"Gunface" has our hero trying his best to be sinister by threatening a female with a gun. "I taught her everything," he boasts, "I taught her how to dream,

I taught her everything, I'm gonna teach her how to scream." Ooooh, that's frightening. He goes on, "I got a debt to repay, I ain't gonna lie , I put a gun in your face, You'll pay for the crime..."

Jagger seems to be trying so hard to be relevant to this big, bad, mean old world we live in that he has to resort to homicide fantasies. That's a long stretch from the days when he could provide genuine goosebumps by introducing himself as Lucifer, telling about the nature of his game.

But there are a couple of enjoyable songs amongst the dreck. "Too Tight", with it's core of Keef's trademarked slop-riffing, is a fun tune. Richards proves that he can do "creepy" with much more finesse than Jagger with "Thief In The Night" (though that one segues into one of the worst tracks on the album, the closer which asks the musical question "How Can I Stop?"...to which the logical answer is, "I dunno, but I sure wish you'd find a way"). "Always Suffering" shows a depth and maturity that is lacking throughout most of Bridges To Babylon.

It's not a ghastly terrible album...the Rolling Stones have been around too long and have too much collective talent to put out a total flop (though Voodoo Lounge comes awfully close)...and speaking of the band's collective talent, I have to say that Bill Wyman is seriously missed throughout this batch of songs. I've never really thought that Wyman was ever one of the genre's most notable bassists, but comparing his work on previous Stones albums to the uninventive ones on Bridges To Babylon and I find myself reconsidering. Keith probably likes it that way, though. Doesn't steal attention from his playing.

Now that I've listened to this record in it's entirety I feel as if I've accomplished something. Don't ask me what, but something, I'm sure. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be all the times when I yanked it out of the player around the time "Low Down" (the 3rd track) hit it's stride. But there is the very real possibility (might as well call it an inevitability) that I will never listen to the whole thing again for as long as I live.

And the album cover is so gaudy and over-done that it's frightening. Definitely one for the Kitcsh files. It's like a portrait of Mick Jagger reincarnated as a lion. Hoo-boy.