2023-10-16 15:47:33
Thank goodness for the cover, the ugliest in the history of Rolling Stones and possibly rock, it was not an omen. Behind that shabby montage of a Photoshop apprentice with firefighter ideas there is a much more than decent album. Because just as they themselves sang in their version of Bo Diddley ‘You can’t judge a book by the cover’, behind a horrible cover hides the band’s best album in… thirty, forty years?
It has been a good idea not to adapt his thirty-first studio work to the times by releasing five, six or seven singles, and advancing only two, the single and excessively poppie ‘Angry’, and the colossal and aptly seasoned ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’, where Lady Gaga’s dressing injects a heavenly punch to the crescendo. Precisely ‘Angry’ is the song that opens ‘Hackney Diamonds’, as if their satanic majesties wanted to start the journey with an advantage, starting with an already known riff that has worked reasonably well for them because it evokes the cutting pattern of ‘Start me up’ . It is when listening to ‘Get Close’, the second song, that she has to listen closely and delve into the new Estonian universe. After an intro that seems taken from an album by Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and other antiheroes of Seattle in the 90s, Jagger makes the song his own with a brilliant, hooligan, shouty performance despite being mid-tempo, and incredibly magnetic. Instrumentated with a Clemons-style sax and rounded off by drum breaks that Watts would never have done but that fit when the intensity increases, it is a much better song than ‘Angry’. This is going well.
Third song, ‘Depending on you’. Ballad. Acoustic guitars, organs and very melodious and accurate vocal modulation. It sticks. The chorus is going to be an Instagram moment with little screens illuminating the stands of the stadiums. And suddenly boom! ‘Bite my head off’ explodes the eardrum, traveling to the garage with an overdriven guitar worthy of Ty Segall, percussive drums, Jagger putting on his wild rocker suit again and… Paul MCartney To the bass. That the Stones-Beatles alliance has borne fruit in one of their most powerful hits in the eighties is amazing.
It seems that things are tempered with a lively but somewhat bland ‘Whole Wide World’, almost in the vein of Brit-pop that crashed musically but not commercially trying to emulate them, but there Richards comes to the rescue with some very sharp solos that Iggy would want Pop on their new albums. And then comes ‘Dreamy Skies’, a slow song with a country-blues flavor that is reminiscent of gems from the past like his version of Robert Johnson’s ‘Love in Vain’, recorded with a delicious old sound, making a harmonica roar that makes you close your eyes. of pure enjoyment and with pertinent lyrics that pay tribute to Hank Williams and talk about the old days when there was only an old radio at home to listen to music. At the end, Richards is heard saying “yeah!” This is enough to buy the album.
‘Mess it up’ follows the scheme of ‘Angry’ but has much more rock in its veins, and it has a chorus that brings Blondie to the forefront and a super funky feeling that will be very danceable on this tour, which like all the others, will be the last. With an analogue ‘One, two, one-two-three…’ starts ‘Live by the sword’, another button of Jagger punkism combined perfectly with a drum that engages at the first change, a honky-tonker piano and guitars sautéed in a sonic frying pan that producer Andrew Watt has taken control of like a true Michelin star chef.
The end is approaching with ‘Driving me too hard’, a mere transition song – or filler speaking clearly – towards the little surprise of the album: a song sung by Keith RIchards titled ‘Tell me straight’, the most reflective, melancholic and confessional of a repertoire that now reaches its moment of greatest brilliance, with the exciting intervention of Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder in the gospel epic of ‘Sweets sounds of heaven’, a tremendous composition that is seven minutes long on the album (twice as long as on the album). the advance single edition) and that grows with each listen… just like many of this ‘Hackney Diamonds’ that ends with, be careful, something called ‘Rolling Stone Blues’. The pure essence. The origin of everything. Wait until Friday.
#album #years #horrible #cover