Rolling Stones to release first album in nearly a decade

The Rolling Stones will release their first studio album in nearly a decade, A Bigger Bang, on September 6th, just two weeks after the launch of their international tour.

Mick Jagger is celebrating his 62nd birthday Tuesday with "A Bigger Bang."

The Rolling Stones announced that their upcoming tour and album will bear the alliterative title, which they came up with last year, "reflecting their fascination with the scientific theory about the origin of the universe," according to Reuters.

"A Bigger Bang" will be released in the United States on Sept. 6 via Virgin Records, and a day earlier internationally. The North American leg of their trek, which had provisionally been dubbed the "Onstage" tour, begins on Aug. 21 at Boston's Fenway Park.

Next year, the band will play Mexico, South America, the Far East, New Zealand, Australia, and will reach Europe in the summer. No dates have been announced yet.

The album marks the band's first since 1997's "Bridges to Babylon," ending the longest recording break of their 43-year career. It boasts 16 tracks, two less then their expansive 1972 tour de force "Exile on Main Street."

Drummer Charlie Watts appears to have recovered from throat cancer and is "playing like a lion," CBC News notices. Some 97 per cent of tour tickets on sale have been sold.

Each time the Stones tour, rumours spread 'this could be the last time' to quote a lyric from an early hit. The band formed in 1961, but has survived several potential break-up wedges, such as a pot bust in 1967, the death of founding member Brian Jones in 1969, the 1977 Richards heroin bust in Toronto and a falling out between Jagger and Richards that lasted most of the 1980s.