Hands up, everybody who wants to shell out for another Rolling Stones anthology containing Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (But I Like It) and Miss You. Yeah, didn’t think so. But here’s another one: Hands up, everybody who’s bought the last five Rolling Stones albums. And now you know why Honk exists. Truth be told, as Stones compilations go, this 25th anthology is a bit of an oddball: The three-disc set totally ignores their first decade, fails to include plenty of songs you’d expect (like, um, Honky Tonk Women) and seems to favour album tracks and second-tier fare like Hot Stuff, Rocks Off, You Got Me Rocking and Waiting On a Friend. But on the plus side, the 36 studio tracks include a bunch of more recent singles and highlights you probably don’t have: Rough Justice, Doom and Gloom, Don’t Stop, Ride ’Em on Down, Rain Fall Down, Just Your Fool, Streets of Love, Hate to See You Go, One More Shot and more. Ultimately, however, the live disc — this set was supposed to help hype their now-delayed summer tour of North America, remember — delivers the bigger bang. The 10-song set collects strong versions of classics from Get Off of My Cloud and Under My Thumb to Dancing With Mr. D and Shine a Light, with cameos by VIPs like Ed Sheeran (harmonizing on Beast of Burden), Florence Welch (reining in her powerhouse pipes on Wild Horses), Brad Paisley (picking and drawling his way through Dead Flowers) and Dave Grohl (rocking out on Bitch). Hands up, everybody who wants to hear that. Yeah, I thought so.
