The group’s first album of original material in nearly two decades feels genuinely fresh, and features Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and guests Lady Gaga and Paul McCartney in fine form.
In the past 18 years, the Rolling Stones have done most of the things legendary rock bands are expected to do—gross huge amounts of money playing their classics on tour and put out archival releases that expand on their legacy.
The group has also endured its share of age-related hardship—singer Mick Jagger had a health scare from a heart issue in 2019, and drummer Charlie Watts died at age 80 in 2021. But one thing the Rolling Stones haven’t done in this period is release an album of new songs. When its last original studio LP, “A Bigger Bang,” hit stores in 2005, Olivia Rodrigo was 2 years old.
Call it the U2 Problem: As a band gets older, it struggles to figure out what it still has to say, and it starts to second-guess itself. The songs that used to come so easily begin to take a great deal of effort, and rather than risk embarrassment with a set of tunes that doesn’t stand up to its legacy, the group plays it safe and focuses on everything but new songs.
While “Voodoo Lounge” (1994), “Bridges to Babylon” (1997) and “A Bigger Bang” all had a handful of decent songs, you could hear the strain and exertion in each, as if the band were trying to hammer a few fragments of a tune into something memorable. Now we have something different: To the surprise of many, the Stones announced a new album, “Hackney Diamonds” (Polydor), in early September. And the triumph of the set, out Friday, is that it feels effortless.
For at least a decade, Messrs. Jagger and Richards had amassed scraps of songs that they failed to complete. In the past year, hoping to assemble some of these bits into a new album, the band connected with Andrew Watt, the 32-year-old producer who has worked with Post Malone, Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus in addition to older rockers like Ozzy Osbourne. Mr. Watt apparently lent some discipline to the proceedings, and he contributed musical ideas in addition to production. He’s credited as a co-writer on the first three songs here, and all are among the record’s highlights.
The opening “Angry,” released as a single when the album was announced, features a characteristic riff from Mr. Richards, and a loose, lived-in melody from Mr. Jagger. The excellent “Get Close” has an even better hook from Mr. Richards and a welcome sax solo late in the tune—there’s apparently a piano in there somewhere, too, played by Elton John. And the rootsy “Depending on You” is an ace ballad, as worn and comfortable as your favorite old shoes, with an impassioned delivery from Mr. Jagger.
While this opening triptych is musically impressive, what sets “Hackney Diamonds” apart from its predecessors is its overall sound. On the classic Rolling Stones records of the late ’60s and early ’70s, Mick Jagger’s voice is relatively low in the mix, conveying its status as one element among five or six important ones. Over time, especially beginning in the ’80s, his singing became more prominent.
By the ’90s albums, one sometimes had to listen beyond his vocals to hear what the guitars were doing. Not so here. And while Mr. Jagger’s singing is less loud, relatively speaking, his voice is in astonishing form—in terms of range, power and phrasing, it has changed remarkably little in the past 40 years.
With no desire to sound contemporary or compete with other bands on the rock scene, the Stones are free to have fun and be themselves. On “Bite My Head Off,” that includes having Paul McCartney sit in, and with encouragement from Mr. Jagger—“Come on Paul, let’s hear some bass!”—he adds a clever fuzz-bass fill to the bridge. In terms of lyrics, the band likewise keeps it simple. Most of the song titles—“Live by the Sword,” “Driving Me Too Hard,” “Tell Me Straight”—convey just about everything you need to know. In an interview, Mr. Jagger hinted that another dozen or so uncompleted songs exist, and that some of these touch on “social commentary.” There’s nothing of the sort here, and the album is better for it.
A few of the songs in the record’s middle, such as “Mess It Up” and “Whole Wide World,” are just OK, bringing to mind the solidly crafted but forgettable material of the past few studio LPs. But even these are enlivened by the easy swagger of the arrangements and Mr. Jagger’s spry phrasing. And the album concludes on an exceptionally strong note, so that when you walk away from it, it seems even better than it is. The stunning “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” the penultimate track, is a seven-minute gospel rocker with Stevie Wonder on keyboards and background vocals from Lady Gaga. The latter seems to channel the sound of Merry Clayton on 1969’s “Gimme Shelter,” and while she doesn’t reach those heights—they are some of the best backing vocals in recording history, after all—she acquits herself quite well.
And then “Hackney Diamonds” ends with just Messrs. Jagger and Richards running through of Muddy Waters’s “Rolling Stone Blues” with just voice, harmonica and guitar. For a time, it seemed as if 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” an album of blues covers, might be the last record the Rolling Stones ever made, and there was a pleasing symmetry to that notion—they started out covering the blues, and then ended that way. “Rolling Stone Blues” maintains that form, but sticks it at the end of the group’s strongest album in a long time. How long? Let’s call it the best since 1989’s “Steel Wheels,” though it’s more consistent. If it all ended here, which it very well may not, the Stones would go out with a good one.
By Mark Richardson
Oct. 16, 2023 5:46 pm ET