The Rolling Stones are in vital mood on their first studio album since 2005.
Dear reader, thank you for taking the time to read it, but this review is largely pointless.
For The Rolling Stones are beyond reproach: an unprecedented 60+ year run, as well as lucrative tour after lucrative tour ($170mill made in 2022 alone) means that Mick, Keith and Ronnie are bulletproof, and a hugely important stitch in rock’s fabric. They don’t need the money to keep touring, but they do it because they love it. Chances are, they will outlive you and me, and their legend most definitely will. And quite right too.
But it’s fair to say that there has been indifference to their recorded output for some time, including by the band themselves. Barring 2016’s Blue & Lonesome (an album of covers), the output of new material has been sparse for 18 years, consisting of just 3 singles (2 of which were for a Best Of). Did anyone even notice? Does the world need a new Rolling Stones album in 2023?
Hackney Diamonds may not be needed, but by god the world would be a poorer place without it. It shrewdly extolls the flab that has bedraggled every album since Dirty Work (1986), but its strength lies not only in its sense of purpose, but its familiarity.
Take lead single Angry. From the instantly recognisable, loose-but-tight riff to the slinky drums and Mick Jagger bemoaning a relationship, it couldn’t be anyone else. Indeed, it has so many Stones signposts that it could have been written (but not performed) by AI. And yet it’s great, and exactly what you want them to be.
The muscular, strutting Get Close, complete with raucous saxophone, contains another Keef (or is it Ronnie, who on the live stage does much of the heavy lifting nowadays?) specialty as Mick pleads, ‘Tell me that you’d rather die than live without me’. Also great, as is the yearning Whole Wide World, on which the singer seems to be looking back to the days when the establishment worked against them in the 1960s, lamenting the ‘filthy flat in Fulham’ yet knowing, ‘you think the party’s over but it’s just begun’ (something of an understatement).
Jagger even sings in an unusually English accent (‘Lahndan’) as if taking himself back there, but the combustible soloing from Wood and Richards compensates for any cringing.
Of course, despite their best intentions, The Rolling Stones aren’t immortal and suffered a huge loss in 2021. However, Charlie Watts is still present, drumming on two numbers: the floor-filling Mess It Up and the snarling Live By The Sword. The former is a perfect fusion of Mick’s pop to Keith’s rock, a simple but effective melody swaddled in swaggering rock and roll, with Watts’ percussive swing elevating it beyond its realistic ceiling, while the latter reunites the band’s original rhythm section by bringing back Bill Wyman.
Keith Richards often mentions the importance of the roll rather than the rock, and here his theory is presented in perfect form, with added boogie-woogie piano from Elton John.
It’s rare that Reg Dwight (who also pops up on Get Close) gets only a passing mention, but he’s one of a handful of heavyweight contributors, with 2 on 1 track. Lady Gaga brings her A game to Sweet Sounds Of Heaven, a shimmering slice of gospel rock as her impressive range and delivery puts Mick’s wailing to shame, but good on him for trying, and otherwise it’s perhaps his best-ever vocal, carrying an impressive cast of musicians from bridge to chorus.
A false ending belies what the atmosphere must have been like in the studio, with Stevie Wonder (yep) choosing the perfect note every time because that’s what he does. At 7 minutes it’s perhaps over-indulgent, but if you’ve got those people in the studio at the same time, you milk it.
There are some lower points, but when the bar is this high that’s inevitable: Dreamy Skies is the mandatory country ballad and is fine if functional (albeit better than many past attempts), while Depending On You finds Jagger on the receiving end of a mistreating woman (again) but still has a verve and vivacity. It was apparently written in the ‘old way’ of Jagger and Richards cheek to jowl, and as such is worthy of inclusion.
Tell Me Straight is the compulsory ‘Keith Ballad’ and one of the stronger efforts as his weathered growl ruminates, ‘Is my future all in the past?’ (a rare example of contemplation) against atmospheric acoustics.
But best of all is the wired Bite My Head Off, featuring a fuzztone bass from a certain Paul McCartney, the man responsible for The Rolling Stones’ first hit some 60 years ago. Bizarrely but wonderfully, it’s a punk track where Jagger snarls and growls (‘the whole fucking ship is sinking!’) while Richards is The Human Riff +. Furious in delivery, octogenarians have no right to sound this vital, and when the solo kicks in you’ll be punching the air.
If this to be the last Rolling Stones album (which we hope not but has to be a possibility) then Rolling Stones Blues – a cover of the Muddy Waters song which inspired the band’s name – is an appropriate track on which to end things. It’s raw, stripped back and brings things full circle to that train platform over 60 years ago.
But let’s hope that’s not the case. Hackney Diamonds is, frankly, better than it has any right to be, and The Rolling Stones haven’t sounded this vital for some time.
It was thought that the days when they were an inspiration were long gone, but they’ve still got some tricks left.
