A three year gap that saw Mick release a solo album. Listening to 'Dirty Work', Keef was either asleep or not bothered about writing guitar lines that are even remotely interesting, different or special. This is run of the mill stuff that wouldn't have even seen the light of day had the name 'Rolling Stones' not been attached to it. We've such generic material here, all that saves this album from utter crapness is the groove of 'Harlem Shuffle', a pop song that proves the Stones could still kick up a nice thing if they put their minds to it. So, what's the excuse for the rest of the album? For example, the opening 'One Hit' sounds to me like a song designed to fight off much of the critism the dance thing the previous album had attracted. Yet, that 'dance thing' was at least slightly inventive and required a modicum of thought from the band as to how they had to approach the arrangements of the songs. To be fair, 'One Hit' has a fine guitar solo all through it, yet there remains absolutely nothing at all distinctive about it. Nothing. As for the title song, well. It's just not memorable. What, this is the best song here? A song so good the album was named after it? Why not call the album 'Harlem Shuffle' instead? Anyhoo. Yeah, the title song has trite lyrics that you can barely hear anyway, and given the musical backing, don't have much desire to want to.
A competent session guitarist could have played all of the guitar lines on this album. Keef does do good guitar lines, but they just don't seem to consist of anything imaginative creatively. The 80s seem to have sucked everything out of the group, by this stage. We had 'Tattoo You', which reprised classic sounding Stones songs, in places. 'Undercover' had a measure of ambition about it. The terrible critical reception 'Undercover' received seems to have removed all of The Rolling Stones ambition, however. Songs such as 'Back To Zero' seem to be lowest common denominator. Like, "oh yeah, let's just sound as shit as everybody else. Everybody else is sounding shit, so why can't we? We're The Rolling Stones, we'll get away with it". Etc, etc. Oh, I can't be bothered to sit through this crap any longer, so i'll end this review..... right now.
One Hit / Fight / Harlem Shuffle / Hold Back / Too Rude / Winning Ugly / Back To Zero / Dirty Work / Had It With You / Sleep Tonight / Instrumental
A competent session guitarist could have played all of the guitar lines on this album. Keef does do good guitar lines, but they just don't seem to consist of anything imaginative creatively. The 80s seem to have sucked everything out of the group, by this stage. We had 'Tattoo You', which reprised classic sounding Stones songs, in places. 'Undercover' had a measure of ambition about it. The terrible critical reception 'Undercover' received seems to have removed all of The Rolling Stones ambition, however. Songs such as 'Back To Zero' seem to be lowest common denominator. Like, "oh yeah, let's just sound as shit as everybody else. Everybody else is sounding shit, so why can't we? We're The Rolling Stones, we'll get away with it". Etc, etc. Oh, I can't be bothered to sit through this crap any longer, so i'll end this review..... right now.
One Hit / Fight / Harlem Shuffle / Hold Back / Too Rude / Winning Ugly / Back To Zero / Dirty Work / Had It With You / Sleep Tonight / Instrumental