Hackney Diamonds

If there’s a better way to end the Rolling Stones’ 60-plus-year recording career, it’s hard to imagine what it could be.

The fact that Hackney Diamonds is this damn good further proves that even the bands who’ve given every bit of themselves to the music still have more left to give.

It may not quite be the equal of records like Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed (very few are, to be fair), but if Hackney Diamonds really is to be the final Rolling Stones album, it’s one incredible swansong.

It’s a 21st-century record for a 21st-century audience that, with an old-school 48-minute duration, only ever leaves the listener hungry for more.

While there’s a constant sense of fun, there’s also always a consciousness about who, or what the Rolling Stones are.

The Stones are the Stones; a law and legend unto themselves, with nothing more to prove and no need to compete with the latest crop of young turks who covet the crown but know they’ll never wear it. Hackney Diamonds sparkles brightest when it touches base with bygone precious gems.

Hackney Diamonds strains at the leash to show just how vital and dynamic the tones still are, with Jagger very much in pole position. .... Reborn again, the Stones kick back and celebrate. [Dec 2023, p.20]

A fine comeback by any measure. Some 60 years on, the Stones are rolling as effortlessly as ever. Welcome back, boys.

The songs blend the same ingredients the Stones have been using since the beginning — blues, rock, soul, country, gospel — but they’re tighter and punchier than on any of the band’s previous late-era LPs. Catchier too.

What Hackney Diamonds has in profusion is really good songs.

As good as it is, ‘Hackney Diamonds’ does have bad spots. Country honker ‘Dreamy Skies’ would’ve sounded outdated in the ‘70s – and even a cameo from founder bassist Bill Wyman can’t save punk-y cringe-a-thon ‘Live By The Sword’, another victim of Mick’s interminable Johnny Rotten impression. Those low points are thankfully scarce, fewer and farther between than on anything this side of 1981.

Hackney Diamonds feels like a self-aware, historically mindful party, Jagger’s remarkable vocal thrust utterly unimpaired.

Hackney Diamonds isn’t just another new Stones album, but a vibrant and cohesive record — the first Stones album in ages you’ll want to crank more than once before filing away.

A late-career Exile on Main Street? Their best since the Seventies? Arguably, but such hyperbole undeniably rests on the broad shoulders of the seven-minute “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, the album’s spectacular spiritual crescendo.

The whole album feels like the band are genuinely interested and engaged.

It’s by no means perfect, but that’s not what the Rolling Stones are about. These troubadour, raconteurs set the blueprint and this is them laminating it for good measure, refusing to ever let the moss grow fat.

Hackney Diamonds is a really great late Stones album, albeit just a pretty good rock album in the canon of history. That’s a compliment.

At its heart, it's nothing more than the Rolling Stones knocking out some good Rolling Stones songs, which seems like a minor miracle after such a long wait.

Hackney Diamonds may not go down as an iconic Stones LP, but this late in the game it's basically a triumph by nearly every measure.

‘Hackney Diamonds’ is probably the Rolling Stones’ best album in two decades. .... Equally, while his status as a lizard-like, hip-shaking frontman of immortal prowess remains intact, Jagger’s lyricism – so often underrated – delivers a few clunkers here. The highs, though, are what fans are tuning in for.

As high-energy and catchy as most of Hackney Diamonds is, though, the album also showcases a few tracks that suggest that the Stones might be better off embracing their age rather than asserting their eternal youthfulness (“I’m too old for dying and too young to lose,” Jagger declares on “Depending on You”).

Hackney Diamonds might not be an album that’ll stand the test of time à la Exile on Main St. or Sticky Fingers, but they’ve managed to successfully keep the boat afloat for one more album, and that in itself is a mini miracle.

Full of defiant brio and what you might charitably call unreconstructed Stonesiness – the Sydney Sweeney-starring video for Angry is a case in point; the LP’s Bill Wyman cameo is another – Hackney Diamonds is packed with convincing echoes of the band in its pomp.