Contributing musicians: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Steve Jordan, Matt Clifford, Andrew Watt, Charlie Watts, Elton John, Benmont Tench, James King, Karlos Edwards, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Ronnie Blake, David Campbell (arranger), Alyssa Park, Charlie Bisharat, Jennifer Takamatsu, Michele Richards, Philip Vaiman, Sara Perkins, Songa Lee, Tereza Stanislav, Luke Maurer, Tom Lea, Jacob Braun, Paula Hochhalter.
 

Angry
Get Close
Depending on You
Bite My Head Off
Whole Wide World
Dreamy Skies
Mess It Up
Live by the Sword
Driving Me Too Hard
Tell Me Straight
Sweet Sounds of Heaven
Rolling Stone Blues
 
 

It got called Hackney Diamonds because I think we were flinging ideas around for titles. We went from "Hit & Run", "Smash & Grab" and (laughs) somehow between that we came up with Hackney Diamonds, which is like a variation of both  - and also it's a London band, you know.

We do like four or five takes. OK, and we move on. So no one had time to really think, Well, was this a good song? Should we be doing this song? Because I get introspective, you know. Is this song as good as the other one? Is this song like another one I’ve done? You can figure that out later. Let’s keep moving... We’d worked before like this. We learned and rehearsed some songs... and bang, bang, bang. So, yeah, we did a lot of songs like that, 20-something songs. And then we started overdubbing them, prioritizing them.

A lot of the tracks on the album have that explosion. This is a really in-your-face album.

I like Keith’s guitar on Angry, Tell Me Straight, and Driving Me Too Hard. There’s a different kind of feel on Driving Me Too Hard; it’s almost country. And Dreamy Skies is very sweet. It has a Sweet Virginia-type feel. You’ve got the dance track Mess It Up, which has also got Charlie on drums. There’s so many different genres on it that I love.

I think this album is the Stones, but NOW. I just think it’s the Stones THIS YEAR... I wanted it to be great. I didn’t want it to be just an album that was OK. And I think the album delivered what I wanted.

(I)n truth, the median age of its roll call belies the sheer vitality of the thing. Richards and Ronnie Wood rip through gritty glam and blues rock riffs like guitarists half of half their ages, and rather than mutter reflective wisdom gleaned from a rock’n’roll life mid-winddown – a la Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan – Jagger bawls and yowls about blurry nights, media intrusion and relationship ructions like an eternal A-list twentysomething... 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. As Lady Gaga spills out gospel trills and gymnastics over a slow-burning Pentecostal groove, Jagger delivers a sermon both defiantly personal (“I’m not going down in some dusty motel”) and universally stirring (“Let the music play loud…let us all stand up proud”). It’s a statement song worthy of rounding off a career this monumental, but also one that revives the gritty passions of 1969’s Gimme Shelter. It’s enough to convince you the old are still young.till.

Hackney Diamonds is a joy from beginning to end because it reminds us of the things we love about the Stones while still sounding like it belongs to the modern age. Driving Me Too Hard opens with Keith Richards playing the same riff as Tumbling Dice but the production, courtesy of 32-year-old Andrew Watt, is crisp and contemporary. Dreamy Skies is a country soul strum, with a world-weary quality reminiscent of quieter moments from the late 1960s/early 1970s golden age like Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St. Yet the words, about Jagger dreaming of cutting himself off from the ubiquitous spectre of digital communication, belong to the 21st century... Although Jagger is steering the ship here, Keith Richards leaves his mark throughout, not least on the guitar-weaving with Ronnie Wood in which rhythm and lead intermingle. Tell Me Straight is one of Richards’s saddest songs, a slow-moving lament on which he asks, “Is the future all in the past?” Finally comes Rolling Stone Blues, with Jagger and Richards going back to where it all began with a rough, raw version of Muddy Waters’ Rollin’ Stone featuring nothing more than Jagger blasting away on harmonica and Richards knocking the hell out of an acoustic guitar. So it turns out Paul McCartney was right. The Rolling Stones were a blues cover band all along. The fact that they have never forgotten that, even after writing some of the greatest songs of the rock era, is what makes them — and this album — still so exciting, even after all these years. 5/5

The album doesn't entirely consist of material the Stones cut early in 2023 (sic) -- two tracks feature Charlie Watts, including Live by the Sword, which has original bassist Bill Wyman guesting on a Stones record for the first time in 30 years -- yet it bears the unmistakable imprint of a record delivered on a deadline. There's little hesitation, no thoughtful pondering here: Hackney Diamonds just barrels ahead with a clean efficiency. Although they're largely working with a new producer -- Andrew Watt, who came recommended by Paul McCartney -- the Rolling Stones don't attempt new tricks anywhere on Hackney Diamonds, save maybe Whole Wide World, whose bizarre neo-new wave vibe gets odder thanks to Jagger singing in an exaggerated cockney accent. Even that is a slight nod to the band's mall-rat rock of the early '80s, one of many different guises the Rolling Stones adopt over the course of Hackney Diamonds... Because it has no grand conceptual hook and because the Stones so thoroughly integrate their superstar guests -- not only are Gaga and Wyman here but so are Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and McCartney -- it doesn't overwhelm upon an initial listen the way the lengthy Voodoo Lounge or A Bigger Bang do; that small scale is its strength. 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. 3.5/5

There’s an undeniable dip in the middle, if only a mild one. Whole Wide World – Jagger gives it some cockney while walking the “the dreary streets of London” of his youth – tries hard but tries a bit too hard. The country strum of Dreamy Skies sounds slightly unfinished and could have used more Keith on the harmonies, although hearing Jagger go on about Hank Williams and bad honky tonk in his Faraway Eyes accent before his harmonica comes in is far from unpleasant... Driving Me Too Hard was, apparently, written in the old fashioned way, with these two friends who will never get away from each other for all eternity cheek to jowl. Richards’ riff, his best in a long time, descends from the opening blast of Tumbling Dice, one of the most joyous sounds there has ever been, before moving slightly to the left, allowing his mate to bemoan another lover’s unreasonable demands... All this talk of greatest albums since whenever is one thing, but Sweet Sounds Of Heaven is – by far – the best thing with the Rolling Stones name on it in decades... On an album of exceptional, time-defying, vowel-stretching, soul-charged, goat-acting, Mick-Jaggering, rock-n-roll-defining Jagger vocal performances, this is where he pulls out all the stops. Listen to the way he climbs up the bridge before the horns come in and take the song a step higher. It’s his best vocal since the seldom-heard Following The River on the deluxe edition of Exile On Main St... And are the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world still in there on Hackney Diamonds? Yes, against all sensible bets, they are. Is this the best Rolling Stones record since…? It might be the best one since Keith Richards’ Talk Is Cheap, the greatest Rolling Stones record that never was, and that’s something. The old gods are with us still.

Stop the clocks! Roll away the stones! As rock’n’roll diehards, electric boogie fiends, old groovers and true believers have hoped for, I am delighted to confirm that the new Rolling Stones album is the best thing they have made since their Seventies glory days. Which, it might reasonably be argued, de facto makes it the best rock’n’ roll album of the past four decades at least... Let’s be fair, there have been plenty of wonderful individual tracks since the last thoroughly decent Stones album of original songs, 1981’s Tattoo You. They haven’t maintained their reputation as the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band on live shows alone, and 2016’s sinuous covers collection Blue and Lonesome confirmed that they remained masters of the blues groove. Hackney Diamonds, though, has that added magical something to elevate it above everything the Stones have released from 1983’s Undercover to 2005’s A Bigger Bang. The dozen songs on offer are jam-packed with Jagger swagger, Keith Richards’s riffology, Ronnie Woods’s sleek solos, the Glimmer twins’ aching harmonies, abounding with tight rhythms, catchy melodies, snappy lyrics, dirty energy and all bound together with lightning flashes of hair raising flair. They are certainly not trying to reinvent the (steel) wheel, but they do sound like they may have paid a visit to the Exile basement and reminded themselves what they are really good at. Scratch that – what they are the best in the business at. Producer Andrew Watt has done a superb job of keeping the sound bright, crisp, loud, raucous and improbably modern. This is not the Stones at their most delicate or intricate, indeed, it is arguably simplistic to the point of being almost dumb, but then rock’n’roll doesn’t demand genius. It thrives on energy and feel, on lightning in a bottle stuff that can be desperately hard to capture with the separated recording style favoured in modern digital studios... (Rolling Stone Blues) could serve as a sentimental thank you and goodnight, a gorgeous bluesy swan song from a pair of musical rogues who’ve helped keep the world rocking for over 60 years, and a band that became the living definition of the most resonant and impactful musical genre of our times. Yet this album is just so full of life, so shot with love and energy, only a fool would bet against them doing it all again. The Stones roll on. All is well in the rock’n’roll world.  5/5

Who would have thought that musicians who have so trashed their laurels would return after almost 20 years with such a (mostly) healthy and ill-mannered collection of songs? The Holy Grail for musicians, of course, is that they continue to do in their 60s, 70s and 80s what they were doing in their 20s and 30s. No one expects the Stones’ quality control to reach the same heights as in their heyday (fans have felt the bruise of disappointment far too often for that), and, true to form, a few songs here are run of the mill – Mess It Up and Live by the Sword, both from 2019 sessions with the band’s late original drummer, Charlie Watts, and Tell Me Straight, the obligatory album offering from Richards. But when you add the aforementioned stone-cold Stones crackers to Sweet Sounds of Heaven, an extemporised, exultant and drawn-out gospel tune featuring Lady Gaga duelling with Mick Jagger, you have a batch of songs that are the best the band has delivered in decades. 4/5

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been listening over and over again to this rock revival produced by Andrew Watt as Mick, Keith, and Ronnie — with special guests like Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Charlie Watts (joining in from heaven) and Bill Wyman – simply have discovered the fountain of youth. The songs have echoes of their greatest hits but still sound fresh as ever. You can’t imagine a current band with this kind of energy, skill, and insight... The craziest thing about Hackney Diamonds? You know the band can’t wait to play it live. They could do it from beginning to end in the middle of their show, bookended by hits, and everyone would be happy. These songs demand to be heard that way– and I’ll bet they will be. As Jagger sings in Depending on You: I’m too young for dying and too old to lose.

Behind its terrible title, which makes the new Rolling Stones album sound like a pole-dancing club in Clapton, and its abysmal artwork, which makes it look like a mid-price hair metal compilation, what Hackney Diamonds has in profusion is really good songs: the ramshackle country honk of Dreamy Skies; the appealingly languid Driving Me Too Hard; Get Close, which hangs on a fabulous, quintessentially Keith Richards riff. Clearly the sessions weren’t without their hiccups – in a recent interview, new drummer Steve Jordan complained that the songs were “too poppy”, the guest stars superfluous and, tellingly, that Jagger and Richards should have produced it with his help – but the end product crackles with a sense of purpose: it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, with mortality impinging on their thoughts after Watts’ passing, all concerned wanted the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership to bow out with something noticeably stronger than A Bigger Bang. If that was their aim, they’ve succeeded, coming up with that rarest of things: a latter-day Rolling Stones album that requires no special pleading. 4/5

The Stones have been around for so long – and gone through so many comebacks, so many highs and lows – it’s absurd to talk about this first studio album since 2005’s A Bigger Bang as a return to form, or indulge in all that ‘the best album since Exile…’ stuff. This is basically another record of them doing what they have always done, it’s simply that this is a particularly excellent set of songs which have a certain down and dirty rage that feels perfect right now... At this stage in rock ‘n’ roll’s history – where it’s the forgotten man left in a back room somewhere while the kids sit on the coffee shop terrace sipping turmeric infusions and wringing their hands over their own identities – it is nice to be reminded what rock ‘n’ roll is all about: losing your identity entirely and loving it. This is why rock ‘n’ roll used to matter. It was the freedom. Fleeting freedom from the rest of the world. That’s why it’s always been teenage music. Burgeoning power finding itself constricted under parents, school, authorities. It’s not moral, safe, respectable, sensible, or even kind. But it is exciting. What’s great about Hackney Diamonds is that the Stones manage to reflect on their original spirit as well as actually deliver on the rock ‘n’ roll itself. 4/5

One of Watt's strengths is his ability to emphasize enduring strengths while adding contemporary touches, and he does that again here, helping the band to deliver a late-career masterpiece. Some songs have a live-in-the-studio feel. Others have a modern sense of clarity and separation between the vocals, guitars and drums... The band finish with a nod to their roots in the blues by covering Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone Blues. When Jagger and Richards first met as teenagers at Dartford railway station in 1961, Mick had a prized Muddy Waters LP in his hands, bonding with Keith over their shared musical tastes. Sixty-two years on, this affectionate cover brings the pair full circle, cementing a studio comeback that rolls back the years with astonishing aplomb. 5/5