Stones albums … have been not simply happenings in their time; they've also been peculiarly responsive to their time. There is no way one could adjust his mind to make "Sticky Fingers"—a much better album, in purely aesthetic terms—as apt just now as ["It's Only Rock 'n Roll"] is. "Beggar's Banquet" was recorded when it was widely believed that rock was art and art was life. Accordingly, it was vibrant with crusading fervor…. "Exile on Main Street" and "Goat's Head Soup" caught us—thanks to Bowie, Alice Cooper, Nixon, and countless others—cynical and woozy, and they sound cynical and woozy. "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" seems to be reading the latest phase as an effort to learn how to shrug again, and it suggests something of how self-conscious we are about that. There is no prescription for how to live a glamorous outlaw life … in here...