The Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup Super Deluxe 3CD & 1 Blu-Ray Box Set

Stereophile: Performance 3.5/5 Stars (5/5 Stars for the live CD) / Sonics 4/5 Stars

TAS Rated 3.5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the January 2021 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Another prized jewel in the Rolling Stones' unmatched catalogue is restored to its full glory. Goats Head Soup was the band's 1973 follow-up to Exile On Main St., and contains the songs "Angie", "100 Years Ago" and "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)".

The Goats Head Soup Super Deluxe box set features 35 tracks on three CDs & one Blu-Ray disc (Dolby Atmos, 96kHz/24 bit high resolution stereo, and 96 kHz/24 bit DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1). Included are the new stereo album mix, sourced from the original session files, Rarities & Alternative mixes featuring three previously unreleased tracks, "Scarlet", "All The Rage" and "Criss Cross". Also included is The Brussels Affair, recorded live at the Forest National Arena in October 1973.

The 4 discs are housed in the box alongside a 120-page book with an incredible array of photos and 3 essays: 50 Years On - An Appreciation of Goats Head Soup by Ian McCann; Brussels Affair Live 1973 Tour by Nick Kent; and The Story Of The Cover Art by Darryl Easlea. The set is completed with 4x 1973 reproduction tour posters, rolled up within the packaging to avoid creases.

Goats Head Soup's best tracks are so good, they not only carry the album, they make it sound like nothing else in the Stones' catalog.

More than half the liner notes, 66 pages, is a lavishly illustrated essay by Nick Kent, 'Make You Scream All Night - The Road to Brussels Affair (Live 1973).' In terms that vividly match the bright color photographs, he describes the Stones on tour at a peak of talent and excells. Absorbing Kent's chapter while listening to the live CD is quite the multimedia experience... For the hardcore Stones fan, this reissue is worth owning as a spiffy physical artifact, plus the live CD and the Giles Martin remixes are worth hearing. The casual Stones fan who doesn't desire a handsome box set on their shelf should at least stream the live tracks to get a taste for what all the fuss over this band was about in the 1970s.

Keith Richards called 1974's Goats Head Soup a 'marking time' album and fellow guitarist Mick Taylor deemed it 'a bit directionless.' Fair enough, considering the band had produced a string of four classic studio albums between 1968 and 1972. But Goats Head Soup does have its charms - and it's never sounded better... The real strength of Goats Head Soup isn't rockers like 'Silver Train' or 'Star Star' but the five ballads - the country-inflected 'Coming Down Again,' the hit single 'Angie,' 'Hide Your Love,' 'Winter,' and the trancelike 'Can You Hear the Music.' Despite the rock reveries, there's a wistful tone to this album that captures the Stones at a turning point. Not the band's best, but not its worst - those would show up periodically during the next four decades.