After a nearly eighteen year gap from the album A Bigger Bang, the Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds, on the Polydor label has just been released and contains twelve tracks of original material that seem to get back to basics for this classic rock band. Since Mick Jagger and Keith Richards embarked on a punkish musical journey in 1962, the duo that now includes Ronnie Wood has enlisted a number of vocalists and backup musicians including the incomparable drummer Charlie Watts, who passed away in 2021. In many ways, this album highlights why the Rolling Stones’ persona, on and off stage is so unique. Their cavernous electric sound, raspy vocals with snap articulation, sonic guitar riffs, expansive orchestration and pounding rhythmic vitality has a timeless feel to it – both in contemporary and primal terms.
While operas of Philip Glass, Jake Heggie and John Adams are spun from a different musical genre, an organic force of nature element is also present in their operatic works, of which are highly acclaimed. The music in Hackney Diamonds seems a tad more corralled than one might expect from previous Rolling Stones best, but the essence of an often rough and tumble musical style and brazen lyrics is projected with a noticeable county music hue in songs like Dreamy Skies, Whole Wide World, Tell Me Straight and Get Close with a cameo contribution from Elton John (if you can hear him) and steely guitar riff by Richards.
The Rolling Stones go back to the roots of signature songs like Get Off of My Cloud, with Mess It Up, featuring Watts’ swirling drum virtuosity to in your face lyrics, Bite My Head Off, with cameo bass collaboration from Paul McCartney (if you can hear him) and Live By The Sword with Charlie Watts and Elton John (you can hear him) which include the words, “You wanna get rich better sit on the Board/If you wanna be poor better pay the landlord/If you’re deep in the crime well you’re deep in the slime/If you’re living a lie look me straight in the eye….If you live by the clock well you’re in for a shock/If you’re living for food better lick up your plate/If you wanna be in fashion well you’ll be out of date…” Some cutting-edge urban prose from a group whose musical DNA stirs up a buzz whatever they do and whatever they perform.
If a track represents the current sweet spot for Jagger and his musical soulmates it would be Sweet Sounds of Heaven with collaboration from Stevie Wonder on piano and vocals from Lady Gaga. The song may end up being another standout compositional hit for a group whose career spans six generations. Sweet Sounds of Heaven draws you into a soundscape of acoustic sorority where a bold, expansive blues-inflected tune climaxes into repetitions of drums, piano and Lady Gaga’s hard-hitting timbre that ends with a coda reminiscent of how Stevie Wonder jams to music. The more you listen to it, the more it invigorates, kind of like rock n rolling to metric sequences in the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
Hackney Diamonds shows a different creative aspect in an oeuvre of works by the Rolling Stones. But then again, the group always seems to tap into what’s trending in the world of performing arts and fine arts as reflected by their music, album covers and onstage shows. Given the quality of this album, 80-year-old Jagger and year younger Richards are still in prime time.