Keith Richards, "Crosseyed Heart"

Keith Richards

“CROSSEYED HEART”

Republic Records

The Rolling Stones are on a once-a-decade recording schedule (they just announced plans to make a new studio album next year, which would be their first since 2005). But Keith Richards has been stockpiling tunes, and his third solo studio album, “Crosseyed Heart,” provides a snapshot of a guitarist who knows how to stay out of the way of a song.

The impetus behind most contemporary production is to add. Richards revels in taking things away. His recordings suggest a bare-bones demo more than a gleaming pop production, and the listener can practically feel the air moving in the room, the space between notes. For this approach to work, the songs have to be undeniable, and his latest batch doesn’t always measure up.

The guitarist’s wreck of a voice sounds unstrained and conversational, in the way the last several Bob Dylan albums have opted for intimacy instead of overload. There are a couple of midtempo riff rockers that could’ve easily fit on any middling Stones record of the last couple of decades, and there are obligatory nods to Richards’ love of blues, country and reggae.

Though often cast as the Stones’ resident outlaw, Richards also is the band’s heart-on-sleeve romantic. The guy who wrote “Angie,” “Wild Horses” and “Ruby Tuesday” sprinkles the album with ballads, though the only one that has a pulse is Gregory Isaacs’ reggae lament “Love Overdue.”

The album’s best moment is beamed in from one of Richards’ formative influences. His interpretation of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene” makes it sound like an outtake from the Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” sessions: “If Irene ever turned me down, I’d take morphine and die.”

— Greg Cot,

Chicago Tribune