Defend the Indefensible: Emotional Rescue

ER is played often for a Stones fix.
It has a giddy quality that SG somehow seems to lack in comparison.
Great rock music and simply a lot of fun.

 

Agree about the fact that the best period started with Aftermath, but I would still count Undercover within the timeframe.
Out of that stretch the only complaint I can think of is the overreliance of ballads on IOR&R which makes an already long album seem too long.

 

I totally disagree that the thermal cover is the ugliest album cover. That dishonor goes to Undercover followed by Dirty Work in my opinion. It's still horrible, but at least it's not horrible with hideous gaudy and/or neon colors. As for the songs, well, "She's So Cold" is good and "All About You" is my favorite Keef ballad. "Let Me Go" is goofy fun if not a particularly great song, and "Down In The Hole" while not as effective as I think it intends to be is still at least musically interesting. The rest of the songs though...

Take "Summer Romance". It's a punk song in the vein of the three on Some Girls (which were hardly punk, but that's the best way to describe them). It's generic, meaningless, raw, angry, all that - not really "punk", but certainly an interesting departure for the Stones at that time. It's one of the more tolerable songs on the album for me. My problem here can be examined strictly through the titles. "When The Whip Comes Down"! "Lies"! "Respectable"! Each of those titles lashes out with venom, their subject matter all the more so. With those songs, it didn't feel like the Stones were "cashing in" on the punk craze - it seemed like they had a lot of pent-up aggression that they needed both a way to release (the punk style) and a time to do so (when punk was big). That's why I think all three of them work very well.

On the contrary here, we have... "Summer Romance". I'd expect this to be a ballad or something from the title. But a "Respectable" clone? Where before we got "Lies, you dirty Jezebel/Why, why, why, why don't you go to hell" we now get "It's over now, it's a summer romance and it's through". A breakup song that sounds like that? I don't get it. It seems like a poor pairing of song and genre, and a missed opportunity (not that "Summer Romance" is particularly great lyrically, but still).

As for tunes like "Dance", well, we already have a song about liking music and dancing - with better music and melody to boot - in the form of "Hot Stuff". "Send It To Me" at one point had 20 minutes of lyrics? Did they intentionally select the worst ones? "Indian Girl" used to be one of the only two songs I liked on this album, but every time I listen to it now I hate it more and more. I can't take Mick seriously in this song - what was challenging enough at this point in his life to warrant him singing "Life just goes on and on getting harder and harder"? - and the music is just a third-rate clone of the "Beast Of Burden" melody but without all of the guitar interplay that made that song so interesting.

The remaining two songs I believe are the absolute worst things the Stones ever committed to tape, and I can't decide which one I hate more. These are the only two Stones songs I refuse to listen to. "Where The Boys Go" is probably the worst from a conceptual standpoint - a disco/punk hybrid with girl singers at the end? The mix is absolutely atrocious on this song, and I do have to give credit that this album sounds good - the songs aren't, but the production is - but this song sounds like it was mixed by a coked-up monkey getting whipped with a curtain rod. Then the title track. My problem isn't that it's a "disco" song - "Miss You" and "Hot Stuff" were also just as "disco" (and anyway, I don't think any of them are straight-up disco anyway, I'd turn to Number 1 In Heaven for something like that) - just that it's simply a terrible song. Mick's unbearable, interminable falsetto (too close to Saturday Night Fever for comfort) over a really uninspired instrumental that drags on for nearly six minutes set to some pretty awful lyrics... no thanks! I believe the only reason this became a hit is because it's a title track, because I can't find anything musically redeeming here.

Well I tried to go easy on it since I know this album has a lot of fans but evidently those two songs awake some kind of demon of rage inside me because I had to edit out a lot of metaphors and similes. This is my least favorite Stones album although at least it does have a few redeeming elements. But honestly I think that Dirty Work is a far superior album (yes) and that this is an embarrassing collection of songs that didn't need to be released, at least not as a studio album.

 

It's a great album to me. Maybe not as many 'greatest hits' as on "Some Girls" or "Tattoo You" but I love the jam vibe and playing. "Emotional Rescue" and "Between the Buttons" are maybe my two favorite 'underrated' Stones albums.

 

If there was only one bad thing about ER it was Mick's beard.

 

As far as I know IOR&R and B&B were regarded as commercial disappointments at the time. As for a focused band that likes making albums the band was in total disarray, with Keith sinking deeper in a heroin addiction and other members inside and around the band swimming in similar waters.
It's a small wonder they survived.

 

No, they were in fact number one albums, and went gold and then platinum effortlessly. Angie being their biggest uk hit song ever. The title cut IORR was very well received, and that album was a hit new release, the Stones were back!

You have just read too many insider stories in those books that exaggerate the negative, and have a slanted view of the period. The Stones were rolling good still in 73-74.

 

IMO Emotional Rescue is a very "loose" sounding album, possibly even their loosest ("Where The Boys Go", for example, is one of the sloppiest sounding barely-a-song performances they ever did, which is part of its charm of course...see also "Send It To Me") whereas Some Girls -in spite of some of the 'humour' found in some of the songs- wants to be taken so seriously as an album, as an artistic statement, it's very self conscious to me: "Yes, we know our last three albums have gotten their share of criticism, here's a GOOD Stones album again!" On parts of Some Girls they sound like they're trying too hard; Emotional Rescue sounds pretty effortless (which to be fair is one of its criticisms as well).

Emotional Rescue has always been one of my automatic "go-to" Stones albums, whereas I find I actually have to be in the mood to listen to Some Girls. Or Tattoo You, for that matter...

 

"Emotional Rescue" is not a bad Stones album and for that reason, I've never paid attention to what professional rock critics have to say. Like many bands and artists, the Stones reached a point where they were basically competing with themselves and their previous albums. There was this debated notion that nothing they could ever release would compare to their previous works and that actually seems like a good problem for a band to have.

 

I admit I fit into this camp, and never liked this album. The falsetto in the title track puts me right off. It's been decades since I've listened to it, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate it.

 

I came to it via the band Phish since they do a tongue in cheek cover of the title track. Turns out that the album is a lot of fun; I see what drew Phish to it.

 

I came to it via the film A Bigger Splash, released earlier in the year.
Ralph Fiennes plays a record producer who has a big scene where he extols the greatness of Emotional Rescue before doing a crazed dance to it.
He is meant to be a bit of an idiot, but it sold me on the album, enough to give it a proper listen.

That scene isn't online that I can find, so here is the trailer

 

Keith, disco, Mick , bank balance, expediency. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Always thoroughly enjoy Emotional Rescue as an album. Not a bad track on it although obviously not one of the Stones best.

Would be even better if "If I Was a Dancer" was the opener.

"All About You" is a lovely album closer.

Elsewhere "Let Me Go" highlights the guitar interplay of Wood/Richards and "She So Cold" is a Stones classic.

The album cover has grown on me, nice colours, not a bad result considering Mick had a giant beard at the time that made him look like he was eating a dog.

 

Indeed it would- I'll take "If I Was A Dancer" over "Dance" any day, thanks. Hell, "If I Was A Dancer" was the main reason I bought Sucking In The Seventies...

Admittedly I would have preferred "Let's Go Steady" over "All About You" as the Keithsong on Emotional Rescue, but whaddya gonna do?

 

Having now heard that track I agree.

 

I love this record and can't understand why it's spoken of in such disparaging terms. It's no classic for sure, and many of the songs are not as strong as Some Girls (e.g. 'Let me Go', 'Summertime Romance', 'Where the Boys go' - probably Some Girls off-cuts anyway) but it's fresh and fun. Reinvorated from the sound and success of the previous album, Keith is back in the frame, which has to be good - check out his guitar work on 'She so Cold', 'Send it to Me' and the hilarious 'Dance' (and try to stifle thoughts of 'Flight of the Condords' and 'Stella Street', if you know the TV series). Charlie is right up in the mix, which is exactly where he should be. I personally find 'Indian Girl' quite moving, if I try not to think about what Mick's REALLY got on his mind. And Emotional Rescue, the track, is by no means a poor man's 'Miss You': Mick falsetto and the band's performance on it are fantastic. They actually sound like a band working together, and a much-better recorded and mixed one than the muddy garage variety of Some Girls. Just one thing, though: the running order. If you re-programme it to the following, it sounds much better IMO:

Dance
Summertime Romance
Send it to Me
Let me Go
Indian Girl
Where the Boys Go
Down in the Hole
All about You
She's so Cold
Emotional Rescue