EXILE ON MAIN ST
| The Rolling Stones
EXILE ON MAIN ST
Exile on Main St. is a double album by English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 12 May 1972 on LP by Rolling Stones Records. It was the band's first double album and tenth studio album released in the United Kingdom. It was partially recorded in a rented villa in Nellc te, France while the band lived abroad as tax exiles, and is rooted in styles such as blues, rock and roll, swing, country, and gospel. The sessions included additional musicians such as pianist Nicky Hopkins, saxophonist Bobby Keys, drummer Jimmy Miller, and horn player Jim Price, and were completed at Los Angeles's Sunset Sound.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again
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Pitchfork
the sweaty, grimy Exile on Main St. has grown into the Rolling Stones' most universally acclaimed record
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BBC
Reminded us why the Stones, even at their most dishevelled, weren’t to be underestimated.
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AV Club
Whether Exile On Main Street is the best rock ’n’ roll album of all time is open to debate, but its status as the greatest rock ’n’ roll rock ’n’ roll album ever made should forever go unchallenged.
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Consequence of Sound
From the opening riff of “Rocks Off” to the closing crescendo of “Soul Survivor”, Exile has proven, undoubtedly, to be the quintessential Rolling Stones album; the result of Keith Richards’ strenuous study in old-time Americana, southern blues, and ramshackle country-western music.
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Independent
The album continues to inspire scores of musicians, including Ryan Adams who covered the entire thing in a special live show in New Orleans last weekend.
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Sound Blab
It is the pinnacle of their career, to which all their previous roads have led and from whence all subsequent ones fall away.
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Classic Rock Review
As a proper album of this great era, it is extremely average and definitely not the desert island record that so many had deemed it to be.
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Music Radar
A staggering, encyclopedic examination of American roots music - gospel, folk, country, soul, R&B, boogie-woogie rock ’n’ roll, it's all there
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The Aso!ute Sound
Which makes it all the more remarkable that Exile held together so well that every track on the sprawling double album added something special to the mix.
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Uncut
Beyond its musical prowess, Exile is also a snapshot of the beautiful and the damned, a piece of 20th-century mythology that’s lost none of its power to seduce.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
Its murkiness, with Jagger's vocals further down in the mix than usual, can make it impenetrable on first few listens, but eventually its brilliance sinks in as you peel back the layers and discover everything underneath.
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Paste Magazine
We keep hearing that rock and roll is a feeling, right? The Stones inhabited that feeling seamlessly here, mainly because the murk fizzed and fused those seams together.
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Sputnik Music
Exile on Main St. is less of an album than it is an experience, a sort of trip in which not only feel the music, you feel the circumstances in which the album was made under.
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The telegraph
But when you tuck into Exile, what you are getting is a flavour. The mixes are gluey and dense, inseparably stuck together, with everybody playing their socks off, solos weaving in and out, and Jagger shouting to be heard above the din.
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Alt Rock Chick
However, when I listen to Exile it has some of the worst mixes I’ve ever heard. I’d love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally I think it sounds lousy.
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KSMC Moraga
an amplification of the tough insights of “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” A brilliant projection of nerve-torn nights that follow all the arrogant celebrations of self-destruction, a work of love and fear and humanity.
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vintagerock.com
an intoxicating melting pot of gospel, blues, country and rock
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All About Jazz
A magnificent spontaneity permeates The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street
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Cover Me
And what songs! Torn and frayed, tumbling and loving, they rose and fell from the album’s grooves, ready to knock or sweep the listener off his feet.
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Pop Dose
it’s got everything, from the full-tilt boogie of “Rip This Joint,” to the otherworldly blues of Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips,” and the terrifying voodoo of the savage “Ventilator Blues.”
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Countdown Kid
once you put on the first song, you’re not gonna want to stop it until it concludes about an hour or so down the road and you’re soaked in its glorious muck
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Beats Per Minute
Exile is without question the best cross-section of everything the Stones have ever tried to do, from balls-out rockers (“Rip This Joint”) to straight blues (“Shake Your Hips”) to country (“Sweet Virginia”) to gospel (the album’s clear standout, “Shine a Light”). 100%
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The Vinyl District
it’s Exile’s moments of transcendence–the grace notes as it were–that bring me back to it when I’m in the mood to paint the whole world black
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My Vinyl Review
organic, exciting and dynamic on some cuts, and dark, mysterious and swampy on others
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The Georgia Strait
the Stones deliver music with all the warmth and callused toughness that was once second nature to them, making the raw, half-cut sounds they toss into the air land in beautifully rumpled heaps
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FULLALBUM-TUBE
it stands not only as one of the Stones’ best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock
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Elsewhere
the last great gasp of the Rolling Stones.
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
it's great because one would be hard pressed to find on a single CD ... a more complete, thorough, or just entertaining depiction of what American music really is, and where rock and roll comes from. And that's enough.
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Only Solitaire
In all, there are some more great rockers here.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
A double album, and it's worth the long format. Plenty of good stuff here
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The Guardian
Appalling, diseased behaviour has never sounded as appealing as it does on Shine a Light or Torn and Frayed; the Stones were never more convincing as a country band than on Sweet Virginia.
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Robert Christgau
Weary and complicated, barely afloat in its own drudgery, it rocks with extra power and concentration as a result.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
hey aren't stretching themselves here, apart from possibly even managing to record these eighteen songs in the first place.
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Don Ignacio
a huge rock 'n' roll classic
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Mark's Record Reviews
Only a few of these songs are radio standards, but they all should be. The essential bar band record.
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All Music
Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock.
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