The Rolling Stones' album review: McCartney and Gaga pitch in on Hackney Diamonds
Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones: new album Hackney Diamonds. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/Shutterstock)
- The Rolling Stones
- Hackney Diamonds
- ★★★★☆
As anyone who saw the Rolling Stones play Croke Park in 2018 will testify, even in their twilight they remain one of the most irresistible forces in rock. But for the past several decades, they have existed primarily as a live entity, with 1981’s Tattoo You regarded as their last essential album (and that consisting primarily of reworked older material).
That creative drought comes to a spectacular end with their rollicking new LP, Hackney Diamonds (released Friday October 20). It’s a hugely enjoyable late-career rebound from Mick Jagger and the gang. A loud, lush and lusty reminder that, at full tilt, nobody shakes the foundations like the Stones.
It doesn’t reinvent their sound. Instead, it reclaims it, as made clear with the thunderous first single, 'Angry'. When the song was released over the summer, the consensus was that it was a cousin first removed of Start Me Up – and that this was fine.
So it goes for the rest of a richly rambunctious record, which reconnects joyously with various chapters of the Stones’ career, via the shuffling dark funk of 'Get Close' to the gothic country thump of 'Depending On You'.
The Stones were always about exhilaration rather than rumination. Jagger has often stated that he isn’t one for looking back. So it isn’t surprising Hackney Diamonds is short on the introspection we expect of musicians in old age (Jagger turned 80 in July).
True, he reflects on the group’s early years as striving outsiders on 'Whole Wide World'. And a deep melancholy infuses 'Dreamy Skies' where, accompanied by Keith Richards’ vivacious steel pedal, Jagger declares, “I’ve got to take a break from it all”.
Elsewhere, the tone is ferociously upbeat. Paul McCartney – who in 2021 wrote off the Stones as a “blues cover band “ – contributes a molten bass solo on 'Bite My Head Off' (late Stones drummer Charlie Watts appears on two tracks). Later, on the epic Gimme Shelter-esque 'Sweet Sounds of Heaven', Lady Gaga pops up for a sizzling duet with Jagger.
There is room for one last twist. Hackney Diamonds closes with a bone-bare cover of Muddy Waters’ 'Rolling Stones Blues'.
Jagger and Richards play it straight on a bluesy jam – a downbeat flourish at the end of an LP that celebrates the Stones’ status as once and future kingpins of ripping, roaring rock’n'roll.
