Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, Stevie Wonder, Elton and Lady Gaga all make cameos on this bracingly energetic new album from the veteran keepers of the rock `n' roll flame
"We were lazy." That was Mick Jagger’s wonderfully throwaway remark at the recent press conference to announce Hackney Diamonds, the Rolling Stones’ first album of new material in 18 years.
"There was a Blitz on," added Keith Richards, helpfully, to explain the long delay of fresh material. It was a knockabout introduction to new music from the last men standing and one-time enfant terribles of the sixties counterculture and Jagger, Keith and new boy Ronnie Wood’s admirable refusal to take anything seriously revealed something of their old rebel streak.
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Long the very definition of a legacy act, with the exception of 2016’s rather good dues paying collection Blue and Lonesome, the Stones seemed destined to spend eternity crisscrossing the planet as a monied bar band but also as the living embodiment of the sixties demimonde they blossomed and then festered in.
But here we are in the early 21st century and The Beatles are about to release a "new" song, a virtual ABBA are performing in concert and a holographic Elvis is probably waiting in the wings. The Stones’ very own resurrection shuffle seems the next logical step in pop culture’s glorification of the past.
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Listen: Alan Corr talks to Claire Byrne about Hackney Diamonds
Thing is, Hackney Diamonds (slang for when one gets one’s window done in on a Saturday night in the London borough) is no novelty retread - it is in fact the best thing The Stones have done since ooooh, Tattoo You (other choices may apply).
It swaggers, it staggers and it affirms that you can’t keep a good bunch of white middle-class bluesmen down despite age, self-parody and inverted snobbery.
Like a smash and grab of their back catalogue, the band’s 24th studio album ducks and dives between ya-yas out rockers, country ballads, hangdog blues and gospel. It was never going to fully recapture any of the three ages of the Stones - the blues rock barrow boys of their first dawning, the apocalyptic dread of their imperial phase and the self-aware priapic posturing that followed - but Hackney Rebels sounds like a veteran band playing out of their parchment-like skin.
It a record of firsts and lasts - drummer Steve Jordan, who was handpicked by the late Charlie Watts to take up sticks for the Stones, makes his recording debut with the band while Watts himself appears on two tracks first recorded in 2019 - Mess It Up and Live By The Sword. Bill Wyman, who finally left the band in 1993, also pops up, meaning that the original Stones engine room are reunited for one final outing.
Producer Andrew Watt, who has previously worked with acts as disparate as Ozzy Osbourne and Dua Lipa, corrals the whole thing into something fresh sounding but without sacrificing the Essence of Stone - filthy riffage, superb vocals and a rhythm section that lurches about with real power.
The early signs were more than just promising. Hackney Diamonds detonates early with bravado opener Angry, a song that has something of the percussive thrill of Start Me Up and leaps out of the speakers like a scalded polecat. A barny between old lovers, the octogenarian Jagger sounds hilarious as he plays the wounded male, variously trying hurt indignation and libidinous pride as he reasons with mad as hell paramour. All this and a Brillo pad of a Richards riff.
Get Close spreads things out on a spacious groove with Jagger warming up his elongated syllables and Richard’s essaying a riff that sounds like a p*****-off alligator over a roughhousing rhythm section. And what’s this? Doesn’t the sax solo sound like a leftover from I Hear You Knocking? Later, the intro to Driving Me Too Hard makes a teasing reference to Tumbling Dice.
Depending On You returns to the kind of broken-down balladeering that Jagger and Richards do so very well. The singer finds himself left high and dry again by a woman who gets sense and leaves him ("I’m too young to die and too old to lose") as pedal steel ushers in piano and strings.
Like Angry, the punky rush of Bite My Head Off squares off for another tale of domestic strife and is pure attack, with Richards spitting out sparks and Jordan’s drums sounding like a runaway train (Steve's good tonight). It is just great fun as Jagger as the spurned lover rolls his eyes in exacerbation and shouts the odds: "If I was a dog, you’d put me down, I’d spend the night howling around your house, well I ain’t on a leash, I ain’t on a chain, I am f***ing with your brain". It also features the deathless phrase, "C’mon Paul, let’s hear some bass!" before Paul McCartney (the man who wrote the Stones' first top 20 hit all of sixty years ago) steps up with his best fuzztone since Think For Yourself.
Whole Wide World sees Jagger doing a strange impression of Bowie during his Anthony Newley period as he sings a lyric that is more Diamond Dogs than diamond geezers. Among the weaker tracks here, it does, however, feature some combustible soloing from Richards and Wood.
Dreamy Skies dips into the Stones' vast store of pining country ballads, while the hugely enjoyable Mess It Up, another tale of betrayal, goes delta disco with choppy guitar and falsetto vocals. Live By The Sword sounds overdone but is redeemed by the strange joy of hearing Charlie Watts reuniting with former Stones bassist Bill Wyman.
There is of course the requisite Richards song and the human riff is at his baleful best on the stately Tell Me Straight, a tale of bourbon-sick blues on which he croaks "Is the future all in the past?"
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And then it arrives like a falling star - Sweet Sounds Of Heaven. This is the Stones in excelsis, a cosmic mountain range of a gospel song featuring perhaps Lady Gaga’s finest-ever vocals and astounding keys and piano playing from the band’s old touring partner Stevie Wonder. If anyone still doubts the potency of the Stones, smile politely and play them this.
Always ready to bring it all back home, the band close the circuit in fine style with Rolling Stone Blues, a homage to Muddy Waters, the man who bequeathed the band their name all those decades ago.
So, is this the Stones' swansong, their final reckoning? With gigantic world tours perhaps now no longer a possibility and with another founding father having slipped away, maybe they’ll become a studio only concern in their twilight years. Jagger has said that most of their next album is already in the can.
But if this is the Stones unfurling the rock `n’ roll blueprint one last time, they’ve done a marvellous job. Hackney Diamonds is a very fine record of ruined splendour and unholy riffage. Far from elegantly wasting away, the Stones are still cackling under the moonlight.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
