Between the Buttons is more coherent (in both U.K. and U.S. versions), but this set, cobbled together mostly from various singles, outtakes, and U.K. album tracks for the American market, is just as strong a document of a great band stretching itself. From the piano-flute-bowed bass backing that opens "Ruby Tuesday" and the fuzzed guitar and punchy horns matching Mick's snarl on "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" it's a whole, exciting new world for the Stones. The quality never lets up through rocker "Let's Spend the Night Together," the faux-Elizabethan chivalry of "Lady Jane," the elegant put-down of "Out of Time," and the sitar-laced pop sociology of "Mother's Little Helper." Not a dud in the bunch and a great start-to-finish listen regardless of how it was assembled.
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