The Rolling Stones : Exile Outtakes

Upon the first ten to twenty listens, The Stones Exile On Main Street comes off as a real fucking mess, and doesn't begin to reveal its true self and the charms within for even longer. But such is the case with most lasting art and Exile is no different. Famously recorded in France while the Stones were in "tax exile" in the basement of Richards rented Villa Nellcôte seaside mansion, the album is a long murky trip through traditional blues, country, folk, boogie woogie, rock & roll and everything in between. It's also, in a word, excellent.
The history of these sessions is the stuff of legend with varied musical guests popping in and out (see: gram parsons). These demos/alternate versions only magnify the loose, debauched and creative atmosphere at Villa Nellcôte in the summer of 1971.
"Exile On Main Street is the Rolling Stones at their most dense and impenetrable. In the tradition of Phil Spector, they've constructed a wash of sound in which to frame their songs, yet where Spector always aimed to create an impression of space and airiness, the Stones group everything together in one solid mass, providing a tangled jungle through which you have to move toward the meat of the material. Only occasionally does an instrument or voice break through to the surface, and even then it seems subordinate to the ongoing mix, and without the impact that a break in the sound should logically have." - Original 1971 Rolling Stone Review