Album: A Bigger Bang Artist: The Rolling Stones (EMI)

Comparisons to Beggar's Banquet or Exile On Main Street will not do this album justice, but A Bigger Bang is The Rolling Stones' best album in the post-Tattoo You period.

More than 40 years after breaking into the London music scene, the Stones have managed to put out a record that makes the mid- 1990s' Bridges To Babylon sound like the work of an aspiring blues band.

One only needs to check out the wicked guitar licks on the opening track, Rough Justice, to hear how good this record is, or listen to Let Me Down Slow to glimpse the masterful songwriting of the sexagenarian duo Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Sonically speaking, Richards returns to his glory days with hard-charging riffs and white-funk strumming, abetted by drummer Charlie Watts who bangs away with complete ease.

At future gigs, tunes from this record will fit right in with such classics as (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and Gimme Shelter. -- M. Taufiqurrahman