Keith Richards
Crosseyed Heart

Well, the good old Keef decides, after 23 years with the inseparable X - Pensive Winos, to release an album. Interviews flood the newspapers, and he's always lighthearted, laughing while passing his Marlboro between his fingers saying, "Sgt Pepper? A piece of crap" or "Yeah, I smoke a joint a day... so what?" A man who knows no masters, who expresses what he thinks freely without constraints, who doesn't need to knock on the doors of bloated producers because he's made rock 'n' roll a reason for living. In his now-famous autobiography "Life," he has shaken off many burdens in a sort of confession-liberation about his controversial relationship with drugs, a favored topic for the esteemed tabloids, his love-hate relationship with his majesty Jagger, and much more. And we find this music giant with the same sly smile on the cover of "Crosseyed Heart." With these premises, you genuinely expect the album of a friend who's returned to play with the desire to do it, to present all the family jewels, from his inimitable riffs (Amnesia, Trouble, Nothing on Me), to ballads to a drunken moon (Robbed Blind, Goodnight Irene), from the unconditional love for the rural blues, poor in means but authentic (Crosseyed Heart) to reggae devotions (Love Overdue). You can feel in the tracks that there's good stuff, genuine sentiment and not easy, predictable, and overdone solutions, not major productions but the desire to enter the studio, grab the guitar, and turn on the amp. Here and there, there's some refinement like in the notes of "Suspicious" and "Illusion" with the precious support of Norah Jones, as if to say that beneath that rough heart and cavernous voice, there are still genuine wonders. In "Blues in the Morning," we hear Bobby Keys' sax in one of his last performances, another piece of Keef's departing career, not just a legendary collaborator but a brotherly friend. With Keef, it's known that you don't beat around the bush much, you go straight to the heart of the matter. A few crooked notes, and he's always there mocking the years where we still haven't figured out where the hell we've ended up. So, let's listen to this album with the awareness that perhaps there will be no more Keith Richards in the future.