Album review: Keith Richards, ‘Crosseyed Heart’

Album review:

The world wasn’t necessarily waiting for another solo album from Keith Richards — his first in 23 years — but who could deny the familiar gravelly tone and well-tread blues licks of “Crosseyed Heart”?

Recorded with drummer and co-producer Steve Jordan on analog tape, it’s a purposefully backward-looking set of music in which the Rolling Stones’ resident guitar god imagines himself an outcast (“Suspicion”), fugitive (“Robbed Blind”) and, in “Illusion,” a duet with Norah Jones, a scorned lover.

The LP’s low-key tone, with traces of reggae and country, suits Richards at 71 — as a man who no longer needs to prove himself but can still outshine his emulators with very little effort.