The new Rolling Stones album “Blue and Lonesome” is something of a time machine.Its 12-bar blues is a party like it’s 1999 or even earlier. The first of a dozen songs kicks off with a little harmonica like this is 1964 too. You may think of Brian Jones on “Not Fade Away.” This time, the harp player is Sir Michael Jagger, no less, who breaks off to declare “I’m just your fool.” He is revising a 1960 Little Walter hit, itself a reworking of a 1953 track by Buddy Johnson. “Can’t help myself,” Sir Mick adds. “I love you baby and nobody else.” The song is barely two minutes long, and is a close relative to “Route 66” made by the Stones made more than 50 years ago.The love lyric is almost upbeat, not the usual downbeat blues fare, until we get to the throwaway threat: “If you gonna leave me for someone new, gonna buy me a shotgun, shoot it at you.”This timey warning opens the veteran quartet’s first new studio album in more than a decade, its first made up entirely of cover versions.It will do nothing to harm the reputation of a band long described by fans as the world’s greatest rock outfit. It also prompts a different question: are these guys in the greatest R&B band too?This 2016 album is a return to their first love when the group formed from two amateur acts from London with a shared admiration for Howlin’ Wolf and other bluesmen. A record by Muddy Waters gave them their first name, The Rollin’ Stones. Now they sound younger and fresher than in years.The late Jones, the biggest blues admirer, was a multi-instrumentalist though never a songwriter. He was therefore eclipsed as leader when the others started turning out the hits. The earliest albums had R&B alongside at least a few self-penned numbers credited to the band as “Nanker Phelge” or Jagger-Richards. These became increasingly numerous and made commercial sense because they got more royalties. It also made artistic sense in a string of outstanding rock anthems. Whatever the merits of 1964 retreads such as “Confessin’ the Blues,” the R&B beloved by their friend Alexis Korner was blown away by all of the originals on the subsequent “Aftermath” or the riff-heavy “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”So how retro is the new release? Some critics have said it sounds more like 1966 than now. That’s not altogether right: we live in a digital era where the recording process is cleaner than that used in the formative years of the Stones. This was done without overdubs though, for the record, as it were. Their band’s style has also changed. Keith Richard’s guitar is now rawer and swaggeringly daring, less bound by blues traditions. Back then, they mixed Americana, blues and R&B with rock. This time, they let the Chicago blues shine through unabashed.The choice of material shows an obsession with the obscure – including numbers that were forgotten until being buffed up and included here. “Everybody Knows About Me Good Thing” by Miles Grayson and Lemon Horton won’t be familiar to many people, for instance. It comes cracking out of the speakers like a new piece, with slide guitar by Eric Clapton, who also happened to be working in Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios in London during the three days of recording exactly a year agoThe blues presented will appeal to aficionados but some are an acquired taste. There are few of the big hooks that fully rival, say, the 1964 cover of Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” (with a stunning slide-guitar performance by Jones). “Blue & Lonesome” is the album that Jones, or John Mayall for that matter, would be proud to see them make. One might wonder what former Stone Mick Taylor, a Mayall protégé himself, would have brought to the table. There is a neat nod to Bluesbreaker history in Clapton’s contributions, which also include lead guitar on “I Can’t Quit You Baby.” But never mind about history or what might have been. Just listen. The single “Hate to See You Go” comes with a video that intercuts contemporary urban cooldom with the current Stones. Jagger is in an ageless white tee-shirt; Charlie Watts remains rock solid as ever; a seated Ron Wood studiously locks into a bass blues backbeat. These are doomy songs, though Richards grins like a demon in the video, clearly enthusiastic about the project and reveling in his role as the Godfather of Pirates and Grandfather of Johnny Depps everywhere.The “Ride ‘Em on Down” video directed by François Rousselet is even more exiting, with Kristen Stewart being as rock-and-roll irresponsible as one can be, smoking at the gas pump and burning rubber in Los Angeles in a Ford Mustang. It’s electric blue and she has a blue lollipop – it’s the blues, right? Don’t try this at home, kids. These guys might be old enough to be your great granddads but they can still get some satisfaction. As the lyric goes: “I’m a dealin’ man, still dealing, yeah, I’ll go keep on dealing till I find myself a bed.”
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