Disc One: 1. She’s Doing Her Thing, 2. Blood Red Wine, 3. Curtis Meets Smokey, 3. Walk With Me Wendy, 5. Tell Her How It Is, 6. Criss Cross, 7. It’s Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It), 8. Too Many Cooks, 9. Fast Talking Slow Walking, 10. Living In The Heart Of Love, 11. Scarlet, 12. Built That Way.

Disc Two: 1. Never Make You Cry, 2. Fiji Jim, 3. Every Time I Break Her Heart, 4. You Win Again, 5. Not The Way To Go, 6. Part Of The Night, 7. Trouble’s A Coming, 8. Covered In Bruises, 9. Can’t Find Love, 10. It’s A Lie.

Disc Three: 1. (You Better) Stop That, 2. I’ve Got Dreams To Remember, 3. I Tried To Talk Her Into It, 4. Keep It Cool, 5. Cooking Up, 6. Eliza Upchink, 7. Still In Love With You, 8. Big Truff (aka Dog Shit), 9. Don’t Lie To Me, 10. Strictly Memphis, 11. Putty In Your Hands, 12. Deep Love, 13. I Can’t See No One Else, 14. Nobody’s Perfect.

Disc Four: 1. Giving It Up, 2. Ivy League, 3. Hands Off, 4. 20 Nil, 5. Flip The Switch, 6. Desperate Man, 7. Prairie Love, 8. Low Down, 9. Might As Well Get Juiced, 10. Too Tight, 11. Sanctuary, 12. Dream About, 13. Extreme Western Grip, 14. Well Well.    

Here we have the very first remastering of the newly released outtakes that appeared in Europe in March 2021. According to what has been posted what has been done is phase correction and new equalization; for who may wonder what that means, phase is the timing of a waveform’s positive and negative values in relation to the frequencies amplitude and if they are not lined up the result could be that phase cancellation may occur with the output sound being much thinner. This has to be done before attempting to equalize anything and we can say with confidence that what has been done here present these songs in the best possible shape, due to them being mp3 sourced. It has been decided to spread the content on 4 discs and thus the artwork reflect this decision as well as the order all these tracks are presented, that is chronologically, just like our previous review had been structured. Meanwhile new information came out on the sessions that produced these tracks, so we will take this occasion to present them. Starting with Disc One She’s Doing Her Thing features Brian Jones on mellotron, on Curtis Meets Smokey neither Jones nor Richards attended the session so it is possible that the guitar is played by Jagger himself or by Ry Cooder with piano being played by Nicky Hopkins. Ian Stewart is instead playing on Walk With Me Wendy; the version of Fast Talking, Slow Walking has new piano again by Hopkins. Scarlet lacks some of the backing instruments we got on the 2020 released version of Goat’s Head Soup Super Deluxe and Jagger’s vocals are less prominent. The demo version of It’s Only Rock’n’ Roll should really be credited to Jagger Wood instead of Jagger Richards, while personnel on Too Many Cooks, which was produced by John Lennon, include Jesse Ed David and Danny Kortchmar on guitar, Al Kooper on organ, Jack Bruce on bass, Jim Keltner on drums, Rocky Dijion on percussion, Bobby Keys and Trevor Lawrence on saxophone and Harry Nilsson on back up vocals. Built That Way presented finished vocals of what has been for years known as Heatwave. Disc Two begins with Never Make You Cry which misses some guide vocals for chord change while Fiji Jim vocals seem to have been reworked. Not The Way To Go is an edit version of the known outtake with an early fade that lacks most of chord changes calls from Jagger and great organ by Ian McLagan. Part Of The Night is the same track that came out on the Art Collins Tapes; Trouble’s A Coming is the version with finished vocals of the instrumental previously known as Break Away and It’s A Lie features an additional piano with regards to the version that appeared in 2018 on Bird’s Vault Vol. Two. Disc Three presents one of the most lauded tracks of this collection, Otis Redding’s I’ve Got Dreams To Remember which features Jagger’s ad lib improvisations on a solid soul background, followed by a more definitive version of Eliza Upchink, the third attempt with refined lyrics while I Tried To Talk Her Into It is an extended version of the tune we already knew. Exactly the opposite for Keep It Cool which is an edit of the 20 minutes plus version that appeared on the Art Collins Tapes; edited are also Cooking Up and Still in Love With You, the latter having finished vocals. What was previously known as The Dog is now called Big Truff, credited to Jagger, Richards and Wood and has less prominent brass as well as some different piano in the background. Don’t Lie To Me seems to be a warm up track with Stu on piano like on Putty In Your Hands, Strictly Memphis apart from vocals has overdubbed brass by Chops Horns. Deep Love has a similar arrangement to the edited version already known but of course with Jagger vocals; I Can’t See No One Else is a remixed version of the previously known version and Nobody’s Perfect has been called a leftover from either She’s The Boss or Primitive Cool sessions, depending on what you may believe, however there is some kind of a consent about the guitars not being played by any Stones member. Disc Four starts with the only track from the 1989 sessions at the West Indies, Giving It Up a great ballad which is an edited version of the take we already knew but with additional piano and then follow 2 tracks from the Voodoo Lounge sessions with Ivy League that features Jagger on harmonica and is the finished version with vocals of the instrumental at first released on Voodoo Brew, like Hands Off that was previously known as It’s Alright/I Got A Hold On You. The following 10 songs come instead from the Babylon sessions: Low Dow sung by K. Richards is an extended version of the backing track, while Flip The Switch seems to be an early take. 20 Nil and Sanctuary are very innovative songs, the former with possibly Me’Shell Ndegeocello on bass and the latter with large use of synthesizer and percussions, K. Richards shares vocals on part of the song: he also sang on Too Tight that features a fiddle that will be removed in the official take. Desperate Man has great vocals by Jagger, Might As Well Get Juiced is an extended version and Dream About sounds like a Jagger solo effort with possibly Doug Wimbish on bass. Prairie Love has such a catchy riff that is really hard to comprehend why it has been left out and not released officially. I think the Stones had material for one album a year from 1998 through 2004 and the only reason they did not put it out could be the never ending ‘difference of opinions’ between the Glimmer Twins; many people have commented that there could really be the Stones themselves behind the leak of these outtakes (more volumes are rumored to come out later in the year), yet nobody to my knowledge has so far hypothesized that it could be one half of the G.Twins to have made them available in order to create some waves in the Stones camp, you may choose which one yourself. The last 2 instrumentals are fillers taken from the 4 Flicks DVD set that are not different from the released versions. So the basic question is now, is this reworked set better sounding than the silver printed set? The answer is yes and if you add to that the fact that it is downloadable for free you may well decide to go for it; if, however, you prefer to purchase a silver version, you will just have to wait some days, since a no label release has already been announced in Japan.