The Rolling Stones have not mellowed with age. Not by a long shot. Proving time, time, time is on their side, they shatter the glass ceiling of age on the aptly-titled Hackney Diamonds, Brit slang for the shards of broken glass car thieves scatter in their wake. On track after track of their first album of originals in 18 years, Keith starts me up harder than ever with his iconic riffs, while Mick has never sounded more petulantly pouty than he does spitting out the lyrics on Hackney. Like he sings on “Whole Wide World,” one of many instant-classic additions to the canon: “When you think the party’s over … it’s only just begun.” And boy, is it a rager.
Studded with sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth cuts like “Angry,” “Bite My Head Off” and “Mess It Up,” which perpetuate the Stones at their brattiest, the album circles back repeatedly to a timeless theme: the push-pull dynamics of boy/girl, boy/boy and girl/girl relationships. But it also ponders the band’s own mortality. “How long can this last?” Keith muses on “Tell Me Straight,” a gorgeous minor-key meditation with a bittersweet guitar. “Is the future all in the past?”
The answer is a resounding “no” on what is arguably the Stones’ most effortlessly tight release since 1981’s Tattoo You. But the future does mine the rich motherlode of the band’s storied past. “If you live by the clock, you’re in for a shock,” Mick warns in “Live By the Sword,” which reincarnates the late Charlie Watts on drums recorded during his final sessions in 2021, with Bill Wyman on bass. Hackney Diamonds was also recorded the old-fashioned way—live, sans click tracks or studio tricks—and revisits all the requisite stations of the cross.
“Dreamy Skies” rivals the best of the Stones’ country-honk blues with its invocation of “the old damn radio” that “just plays Hank Williams and bad honky-tonk.” Though it never rises to the level of “Angie” (what could?), “Depending On You” swells to power-ballad orchestral heights while pondering “a secret shared in my scars.” And, as always, Keith’s solo turn, on “Tell Me True” is a highlight, as is Mick’s yowling falsetto on “Mess It Up.”
Hackney Diamonds also benefits from an infusion of new blood. Drummer Steve Jordan, who’s played with Keith Richards’ X-Pensive Winos for years, digs in deep on tracks like “Get Close,” punctuating lines like “Why don’t you scream it out” with panache. And producer Andrew Watt, an Ozzy Osborne, Elton John and Iggy Pop vet recommended by Paul McCartney, capstones the album with a “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” gospel epic featuring Lady Gaga trading vocal licks with Mick while Stevie Wonder helps stitch it all together on his keyboards.
Fittingly, the album circles back to basics on the badass Muddy Waters’ closer that gave the Rolling Stones their name. Like many other young yankees in the early ’60s, I was first introduced to the blues by the Stones, who mined the motherlode of music by Black artists by listening to “race records” far more available in England than in Jim Crow America.
The Stones dug deeper into the blues than most of their fellow British Invaders, pitting their bad-boy cockiness against The Beatles’ SFW teeny-bopper appeal and recording tracks by real-deal heavyweights like Waters, Willy Dixon, Rufus Thomas, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, whom they also introduced to US audiences on their tours.
If, like me, you rushed online to score tickets to the Stones’ long-delayed Jazz Fest debut, Hackney Diamonds will definitely whet your appetite for their 2024 Fair Grounds appearance on Thursday, May 2, the second stop on a tour promoting the new album. And though the band’s sure to dig deep into a canon larded with more than a half century’s worth of hits, I’m as excited to hear “Angry,” “Bite My Head Off,” “Tell Me Straight” and other Hackney faves as I am to hear “Satisfaction” and “Let It Bleed.” And that’s saying a helluva lot.
