The Rolling Stones - Voodoo Lounge (Remastered) (2020) [Hi-Res]

Half Speed ReMasters HiRes Re-Issue: Originally released in 1994, now remastered & cut at revelatory Half-Speed at Abbey Road Studios from original tape transfers designed to get the very best possible sound from the format.

Voodoo Lounge was the first Rolling Stones album to be made without Bill Wyman who had left the previous year. The band continued on as a four piece drafting Don Was in on production duties. The producer tried to get them to go back to basics - sometimes this was too basic for some listeners but the album was a relative success.

This album features the singles "Love Is Strong", "You Got Me Rocking", "Out Of Tears" and "I Go Wild".

"Funny that the much-touted "reunion/comeback" album Steel Wheels followed Dirty Work by just three years, while it took the Stones five years to turn out its sequel, Voodoo Lounge -- a time frame that seems much more appropriate for a "comeback." To pile on the irony, Voodoo Lounge feels more like a return to form than its predecessor, even if it's every bit as calculated and Bill Wyman has flown the coup. With Don Was, a neo-classic rock producer who always attempts to reclaim his artist's original claim to greatness, helming the boards with the Glimmer Twins, the Stones strip their sound back to its spare, hard-rocking basics. The Stones act in kind, turning out a set of songs that are pretty traditionalist. There are no new twists or turns in either the rockers or ballads (apart maybe from the quiet menace of "Thru and Thru," later used to great effect on The Sopranos), even if they revive some of the English folk and acoustic country-blues that was on Beggars Banquet. Still, this approach works because they are turning out songs that may not be classics but are first-rate examples of the value of craft. If this was released ten years, even five years earlier, this would be a near-triumph of classicist rock, but since Voodoo Lounge came out in the CD age, it's padded out to 15 tracks, five of which could have been chopped to make the album much stronger. Instead, it runs on for nearly an hour, an ironically bloated length for an album whose greatest strengths are its lean, concentrated classic sound and songcraft. Still, it makes for a stronger record than its predecessor." )Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG)

Mick Jagger, lead vocals, guitars, harmonica, percussion
Keith Richards, guitars, backing vocals; lead vocals on "The Worst" and "Thru and Thru"
Ronnie Wood, guitars, pedal steel, backing vocals
Charlie Watts, drums, percussion
Additional musicians:
Darryl Jones, bass
Chuck Leavell, keyboards, backing vocals
Bernard Fowler, backing vocals
Frankie Gavin, fiddle, pennywhistle
Mark Isham, trumpet
Luís Jardim, percussion, shaker
Flaco Jimenez, accordion
Phil Jones, percussion
David McMurray, saxophone
Ivan Neville, backing vocals, organ
Benmont Tench, organ, piano, accordion
Bobby Womack, backing vocals
Max Baca, bajo sexto
Lenny Castro, percussion
Pierre de Beauport, acoustic guitar
David Campbell, string arrangement

Recorded September, 3 November – 11 December 1993, 15 January – 23 April 1994 at Ronnie Wood's house, Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin; mixed and overdubbed at A&M Studios, Los Angeles and Right Track Recording, NYC
Produced by Don Was, The Glimmer Twins

Digitally remastered