The Rolling Stones - Dirty Work (LP)

Product specifications

Details

Album

Dirty Work

Artist

The Rolling Stones

LP release year

2018

Album release date

24 mrt 1986

Label

Rolling Stones Records

EAN

602508773280

Available

Yes

Product information

Format

LP

Quantity

1 piece(s)

Mono or stereo

Stereo

Duration

39 min

Tracks

11 tracks

EAN

EAN

602508773280

Other

Limited Edition

No

Country

UK & Europe

Genre

Classic rock

Box set

No

Remastered

No

Reissue

No

• SHM Discs Deliver Stunning Sound

  4 out of 5 stars
  qeyqxolk1128 November 2025United States🇺🇸

  There's been a ton of talk about whether SHM discs actually enhance CD sound quality or not. But all I can say is, these albums have never sounded this incredible. The clarity is amazing, the bass is so well-defined and deep, and overall, it's just outstanding.

• Superior Sound Quality

  5 out of 5 stars
  fudie7530 October 2025United States🇺🇸

  This is an excellent pressing, it even outdoes the European version in sound quality.

• Dirty Work: Stones' Postmodern Masterpiece

  5 out of 5 stars
  hoydohedurmob25 October 2025United Kingdom🇬🇧

  From 1980 to 1989, the Rolling Stones released five albums that left both critics and fans of their '60s and '70s material feeling rather indifferent. The band was criticized for being in disarray, plagued by internal conflicts, severe addictions, egocentrism, creative exhaustion, and chasing trends—a narrative that the Stones themselves both fueled with nihilistic cynicism and denied, hyping up each album with the same old "comeback" and "best album since..." rhetoric. Yet, the Stones of the '80s shine with a dark, almost ominous glow, like a black hole of rock that is both luminous and cathartic. It's a strange explosion and implosion that sits somewhere between a carnival act and divine revelation (and here's the devil), revealing the ultimate essence and deepest structure of rock itself. The albums of the '80s, particularly the postmodern trio of *Undercover*, *Dirty Work*, and *Steel Wheels*, serve as the ultimate reflection of rock on rock. And what are the Stones if not the archetype of rock itself? From this perspective, *Dirty Work* is, above all, perhaps their most unsettling work. An album unfairly overlooked, when in fact, it's a central piece, both for the Stones and for the very meaning of rock itself. *Dirty Work* highlights, in a martyrdom of ridicule and failure, the primary weirdness that underlies rock culture, and in doing so, acts as a true destabilizing force. The Stones of the '80s, and *Dirty Work* in particular, mockingly expose the inner workings of the Stones machine, revealing its artifice. In *Dirty Work*, they destroy themselves. A supreme rock move. Capturing the semantic flows that underpin reality, coagulating them, and then derailing them—that's the ultimate meaning of rock as a product of postmodern civilization, where creation and destruction are intimately intertwined in a kaleidoscopic groove. And it is here, in the ambivalent shimmer of the products of advanced consumerism, products that celebrate themselves while also propagating their own end, that the vital meaning of rock lies—not in some mythological, romanticized authenticity. And it is here that rock reveals itself to be closer to the plagiarism of hip-hop and dub techniques than to the blues (though it captures the signs and symbols of the blues)! Looking at these semantic drifts, with the Stones lost between disco, dub, wave, fusion, and funk, we see how these drifts only serve to cast a strange light on the band's previous work, erasing in a chilling way any form of authenticity. And let's not forget that the early '60s Stones were by no means a blues band but a bunch of suburban white kids obsessed with the signs of the blues! Punks who grew up in the labyrinth of mass communication, children of the pneumatic vacuum of advanced capitalism, aesthetes of the death principle, sellers of dissolution. And *Dirty Work*, from this point of view, turns out to be a terminal masterpiece in which the layers of reality, both private (the band in human, emotional, and chemical disintegration) and public (the post-human individualism of advanced capitalism, the Cold War...), are reflected in a stylistic confusion that threatens and breaks down the borders of their image. It is rock that threatens itself, rediscovering its ambiguous identity of death. And here Jagger seems to constantly invoke and play with the end, in a climate of threat, ugliness, and terminal dissolution. The Stones are torn between submission to the totem, the celebration of themselves (later elaborated in the beautiful plastic obsessions of *Steel Wheels* and their live shows) and the centrifugal forces of studio work and private life. Critics accuse them of watering down their energy in a tired attempt to follow the latest music trends, and in doing so, they fail to understand that this work on signs/inside the signs is the peculiarity of the Stones. There is no real or artifice, but only a disruptive machine of assimilation/dispersion, which here appears mocking, cynical, and above all, ridiculous. Here they make fun of the human puppet in a work of ugliness and drift. The beauty of *Dirty Work* lies precisely in the struggle of dialectical forces between centrifugal dispersion and that cursed and radioactive circularity, which has always been present in the Stones. Prolonged listening to *Dirty Work* exposes you to a perverse pleasure, where the death principle offers its seductive dance, even more so than in the rest of the Stones' '80s discography. It is a concept about rock and modernity. It is an exploration of the limits, on the limits, of rock. It is no coincidence that the record is constantly haunted by the structural and productive references to dub... with which the Stones have been flirting since the '70s. (*Too Rude* as King Tubby’s ghost). And let's not forget the choice of Lillywhite as producer, who covers the Stones machine with fluorescent neon colors. A concept album on dissolution (of signs and relationships), a meditation on the meaning of rock in the pneumatic vacuum of post-capitalism, accelerated by the economic dynamics of the '80s. Destruction and dissolution sought and feared at the same time (as in *Back to Zero*, the atomic menace in a seductive funk-wave groove, between Talking Heads’ ghosts and polished disco). And then that ending, those few seconds of a distant boogie piano, like an hallucination from elsewhere, as in a Dickian fiction. As if Ian Stewart had been playing from the 'hereafter' (is he dead or are we dead? They seem to ask themselves). That terminal fragment puts the whole work back into a chilling perspective. And here *Dirty Work* reveals itself as a work of death, a labyrinth without a center. Their most post-human creation. When this game of mirrors manifests, you are screwed and lost inside forever, the mind infected and free.

• Dirty Work's Raw Brilliance

  5 out of 5 stars
  ViqJelah8 September 2025United States🇺🇸

  Oh, indeed... the often criticized "Dirty Work" album. I'm a huge fan. This is the sound of a band on the brink. It's quite amusing that the opening tracks are "One Hit to the Body" and "Fight", as it was during this album's creation that Charlie Watts threw a punch at Mick Jagger. It didn't seem to mend fences, and Jagger's ego stayed sky-high. Throughout most of this record, Mick snarls and growls, not bothering to shape any notes. Not that he's particularly skilled at that. Mick's quite the "bender", but not when it comes to musical notes. He'd show up at the studio during the day to record his parts, while Keef & Ronnie would come in at midnight and work through the night on theirs. The band was clearly divided. Also, Ian "Stu" Stewart passed away before this album was completed, and it's dedicated to him. There's a 30-second piano solo of Stu's at the very end of the LP ("Key to the Highway"). Despite all the drama, I adore the final product. Keith usually croaks his way through a song or two on each album, but he actually sings quite well on "Sleep Tonight". It's astonishing because autotune wasn't invented until 1997, so he must have gotten lucky. I genuinely enjoy this album, right down to the flashy cover art. Brian Slade ("Velvet Goldmine") once said: "Rock and Roll is a prostitute. It should be tarted up." Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you... The Whore.!! The Japanese pressing sounds fantastic too.

• Identical CDN CD, Different Matrix

  1 out of 5 stars
  cegopib17 April 2025United States🇺🇸

  I've got this identical CDN CD, but it's got a distinct Matrix number, specifically Cinram # 911205HH.