Album Review: The Rolling Stones’ “Hackney Diamonds”

In a September, during a live, internationally-streamed interview from the London borough of Hackney, Mick Jagger told Jimmy Fallon that the theme of their 24th LP was originally complete “anger and disgust.” All the songs were to be fueled by rage. Vitriol galore. 

Then, he said without irony, they had a second idea. 

“To make [the album] a bit more eclectic, and have a few love songs, a few ballads, a few country kind of things,” he said. 

“Nobody can be angry that long,” Keith Richards interjected. 

Eclectic turned out to be a good choice. While some of the bangers are good, “Hackney Diamonds,” the first Rolling Stones album in 18 years, shines in its laid-back moments of introspection, contentment and nostalgia. 

Fans of the band will smile to hear the late great Charlie Watts count in to “Live By the Sword,” a classic Stonesian rock song with honky-tonk piano stylings by Sir Elton John. Watts also appears on dancey number “Mess It Up,” a virtual mashup of “Start Me Up” and “Beast of Burden” with a four-on-the-floor rhythm that begs for a Dua Lipa feature. 

The album’s remaining harder songs range from good to well…meh. The rollicking “Bite My Head Off” is a good ride, with some fun, heavily-distorted bass by Sir Paul McCartney. “Whole Wide World,” while adorned with a funky riff by guitarist Ronnie Wood, feels formulaic in its working-class struggle rhetoric. And “Angry,” the album’s lead single, sounds like someone fed the band’s middling album tracks into ChatGPT.

Yet the real gems are in the sparser moments. The melodic “Depending On You” is layered with classic Stones harmonies and vulnerable lyricism. Phrases like “Our secrets sealed in our scars / Sharing a smoke on the steps of a bar” and “I invented the game / But I lost like a fool” shine with the classic Jagger ability to pull poetry from grit. There’s little flash from Richards and Wood, but their warm acoustic and electric blends are solidly 1970 while managing to feel modern.  

“Dreamy Skies” goes all in on country blues, slide guitars and a swing groove underneath Jagger’s longing for a place “Where there ain’t another human / For a hundred miles.” It’s an earnest desire: “I got to break away from it all / From the city and the suburbs and the sprawl / And the small-town chatter and the know-it-alls.” 

The album wraps up with Richards’ vocals sounding the best they have in decades on “Tell Me Straight,” a brief, mournful soft-rock ballad; and the triumphant, if a bit too long, gospel duet “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” with Lady Gaga on vocals and Stevie Wonder on keys.  

Jagger has already hinted at another forthcoming album from the band, but there’s real sense of closure on “Hackney Diamonds’” final track, the Muddy Waters tune that inspired the band’s name. Here titled “Rolling Stone Blues,” the arrangement includes only Jagger’s vocals and harmonica and Richards’ blues guitar. 

Mick and Keef may have spent half their lives feuding, but their palpable chemistry on this track conjures visions of the two 15-year-olds meeting serendipitously on a train platform in 1961. 

Six decades and 250 million album sales later, if this is the Rolling Stones’ last hurrah, fans certainly won’t be angry or disgusted. It’s a very good way to go.

Standout Track: Depending On You

Memorable Lyric: “I’m too young for dying and too old to lose” 

Listen For: Richards’ and Wood’s dueling guitars in Live By The Sword