Decryption of Hackney Diamonds | The best Stones album since Tattoo You

Double miracle. The first: there will be a new Rolling Stones album on Friday, their first since 2005 and the death of Charlie Watts in 2021. The second: Hackney Diamonds is their best since Tattoo You in 1981.

Every day during the recording of Hackney Diamondsdirector Andrew Watt, 32, showed up at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles wearing a t-shirt from a different era in Rolling Stones history, drawn from his extensive clothing collection vintagethat we are jealous of.

The sartorial anecdote largely sums up the approach behind this first album of new material in 18 years, in which each song seems to have been designed to evoke a specific period in the rich discography – often exhilarating, sometimes laughable – of the best group English not to be called the Beatles.

The burning sax of Get Close, this libidinously syncopated rhythm? It’s a bit as if tracks removed from Can’t You Hear Me knocking (on Sticky Fingers in 1971) had been exhumed. The country lament Dreamy Skies, set with slide guitar and a tip of the hat to Hank Williams? Slip it somewhere on side B of the second disc ofExile on Main St. (1972) and neophytes will see nothing but fire. The begging, magnificently magane Keith of Tell Me Straight ? It’s a bit the same as that of Thru and Thrurare unforgettable moment of Voodoo Lounge (1994).

Excerpt fromAngryfrom the Rolling Stones

Renowned for his ability to restore to rockers belonging to the good age (Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne) the tone of their fertile and tumultuous years, Andrew Watt does not however work like a Rick Rubin or a T-Bone Burnett, in whom the quest of a kind of original authenticity often takes the place of the only way to age gracefully, at the risk of it smelling like mothballs.

The approach of the young director, who has also collaborated with Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Post Malone, and who therefore knows a thing or two about big pop, sometimes errs on the side of indecision. Does he want to light the path that will bring the Stones back to their true identity or erase their rough edges in order to allow them to play as much as possible on the radio waves?

But in general, the person who also co-signs three titles finds the judicious balance between his desire to place this album in a six-decade-old story and that of writing, in the present, a new chapter.

Without Charlie (or almost)

And the exhilarating pulsation of Mess It Up, She ? The naughty boys had never grooved so naughtily since the days when Mick spent his nights dancing with Bianca at Studio 54. No coincidence: Mess It Up is one of the two songs on which the Rolling Stones’ other disco enthusiast, Charlie Watts, appears for the last time.

This way of machine-gunning his snare drum, like a boxer alternating between uppercuts and jabs, belongs only to him; you will recognize it in a few measures.

Steve Jordan, Charlie’s bombastic replacement and Keith’s long-time collaborator (he co-produced his three solo albums), acquits himself with the heart and soul of a connoisseur of the thankless task of succeeding an icon.

Which does not prevent the pirate Keef from being haunted by the absence of his comrade. You had to see his eyes veiled with a sadness that we know little about, last Tuesday, during his visit to Howard Stern’s show. And hear this touching confidence: every morning, after having unfolded himself as best he can, the guitarist greets a portrait of his late friend, hanging on the staircase at the exit of his bedroom.

Take the things over control

“Nobody was taking charge,” Mick Jagger told New York Times last September. “No one set a deadline. » In 2022, the singer thus issued an ultimatum to his colleagues Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood: by Valentine’s Day 2023, you will have to have a new album under your arm, a finish line that the manufacturing of vinyl records will have pushed back of a few months.

There is no question of the album being released and the vinyl copies arriving later, a concern that is certainly commercial, but only partly so. It is by taking into consideration the duration of an 33 rpm record that the 48 minutes of Hackney Diamonds, a salutary decision, preventing the bloat, typical of the compact disc era, of Voodoo Lounge (1994), Bridges to Babylon (1997) and A Bigger Bang (2005).

In terms of guests, Paul McCartney comes to take a look at (not so) punk Cock My Head Off, although it would be impossible to know if Mick didn’t greet him during his bass solo. In the role of the chorus girl who steals the show, formerly played by Merry Clayton (Gimme Shelter), Lady Gaga is indeed stealing the show on Sweet Sounds of Heaven. Stevie Wonder is also on this gospel escapade to the gates of heaven, a first collaboration with the Stones since their joint tour in 1972.

Extract of Sweet Song of Heavenfrom the Rolling Stones

“Let the old still believe / That they’re young,” sing Madame Gaga and her 43-year-old senior (Jagger became an octogenarian in July) in this piece de resistance, a pagan prayer in the form of an offering to the power of music , thanks to which time and death suddenly no longer exist. We already knew it: Mick never gives as much of himself as when he is in the presence of a young woman.

By concluding their album with their duet interpretation of Rollin’ Stonethe blues of Muddy Waters from whom they stole their name, the Glimmer Twins seem to want to signal that a circle is being completed, even if Jagger is already talking in interviews about a sequel.

“Solos come and go,” Keith Richards said last week at the microphone of Global News Podcast from the BBC. “The riffs last forever. » But Mick, Keith and Ronnie – life is like that – will all end up joining Charlie. Until then, let’s measure our luck. You can’t always get what you wantbut it still sometimes happens that one fine Friday, a new Stones album lands in record stores.

Rock

Hackney Diamonds

The Rolling Stones

Polydor
On sale Friday

8/10