The Rolling Stones Return with ‘Foreign Tongues’

A Rolling Stones album in 2025 is no longer an event that demands a grand narrative. Their first two decades cemented the catalog; the next four decades, with Ronnie Wood in the fold, often felt like a lesson in endurance over urgency. Then came Hackney Diamonds, an album that disrupted the drift. It wasn’t a return to form so much as a reminder that the form had never fully left. Its sequel arrives quickly. Foreign Tongues is the first full-length since Charlie Watts’ death, and the band treats the loss not as a rupture but as a change in the weather.

Steve Jordan, who already handled most of the drumming on Diamonds, plays on all but two tracks here. His approach is instructive: he makes no attempt to mimic Watts’ feel, a choice that aligns with the Stones’ history of never having a new player copy a predecessor. The result is loose and alive, the sound of a group still chasing something unnameable. Producer Andrew Watt, back from Diamonds, keeps the sessions taut without sanding off the rough edges.

The tracklist moves through familiar territories — country-blues on “Rough and Tumble,” lean rockers like “Mr. Charm,” a foray into disco with “Never Wanna Lose You” — without feeling like an exercise. Guest spots from Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Robert Smith, Bruno Mars, and especially Steve Winwood scatter across the album, but the hierarchy is clear: these are songs that belong to the Stones first. Even a cover of Amy Winehouse and a Chuck Berry number at the close sit comfortably inside a record that understands the joy of playing no longer needs a legacy argument. For a band that once seemed to be in permanent victory-lap mode, Foreign Tongues sounds like forward motion.