If You Try Sometimes

I've been listening to the Rolling Stones a bit lately, this album and this one. Both of them are part of the Stones' four consecutive huge albums stretching Starting with 1968's Beggar's Banquet, but Exile is generally regarded as their best work. Let it Bleed is also generally perceived as great, but not generally as great. I think that's messed up. Reason #1 and reason #2. There are plenty of reasons, though, including the artwork. Sorry about the crappiness of the second link there, YouTube was being particularly lame about this song, which is weird because it's kind of super famous. It's also a favorite of Pops, if I recall correctly, so a shout out there.

Robert Xgau, famed music critic and pretentious jerk claims it took him 25 times listening to Exile to really get what the Stones were doing with it, but as much as I like his particular brand of concise, harsh and arbitrary criticism, I think he's wrong on this one. The album is basically just a bunch of crap put together over the course of a few years with no real direction in mind, so there's really not that much to get. Sometimes that works out really well; see The White Album, for example. Sometimes it just leads to a garbled mess, which is what I think Exile is, though as it is old Rolling Stones, it's at least a delightful bluesy mess.