The fourty-sixth album: #46 The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones
When you think about the Rolling Stones, you think about the hard sounds, with a fair amount of shouting and hard guitar sounds. And while there's a bit of an edge, Route 66 sounds far more like blues when it starts. It feels softer, less aggressive than I would expect from the Rolling Stones. It's relatively clean, and I sort of miss the dirtiness in this.
At the same time, this is down in part to multiple songs here being covers, that aren't quite as adjusted to the band. And in that sense, they are better performers of covers than the Beatles were, here creating a sound that elevates the song quite a bit and adds its own touch.
What's odd is how Phil Spector is credited for some of the songs, and plays background instruments on one of them. I wouldn't have expected those two streams of music to mix like this.