We all have freak cousins, or at least we have a few relatives who are a showstopper at something. I have a cousin who only listens, only, only to the Rolling Stones.
A true divinization. Pure fundamentalism.
For him there is no other music other than Jagger and co.
A sort of eleventh commandment that he respects by sanctifying the holidays (that is, when they come to Italy he strictly goes to concerts) and by perpetrating and welcoming their preaching.
“Hackney Diamonds” is the last book of their “apocryphal gospel”. A record that arrives after an absence of eighteen years since their last album of unreleased studio songs, which dates back to 2005 with “A Bigger Bang”.
There’s a bit of the Rolling world on the album. There’s the late drummer Charlie Watts who is featured on two tracks, Mess It Up and Live By The Sword, there’s the band’s former bassist, Bill Wyman, also in Live By The Sword.
There’s Keith Richards as Lead Vocals in Tell Me Straight.
There’s Lady Gaga’s voice and Stevie Wonder’s keyboards and piano in Sweet Sounds Of Heaventhere is Elton John’s piano in Get Close and Live By The Sword and there is also the bass of Sir Paul McCartney, the Beatles’ lifelong friend-rival, in Bite My Head Off.
A record that represents an epitome of the band’s history, not the final chapter (at least we hope so), but yet another rolling stone that makes up the historical imagination made of a rock ‘n’ roll sound that blends with the blues and with pop.
And right at the end of the record there is Rolling Stone Blues. The perfect closing of the circle. The return from where they started sixty years ago.
If this were to be their last album everything would fit perfectly!
But knowing the history of Mick, Keith and Ronnie, damn this is their last album!!!
My cousin’s vote? 10 of course, without a shadow of a doubt, but not so much for the music, he too is objective and tells me that there is nothing new even if the record says that it is granitic and Stones just as he would have expected, but rather for the historical aspect of the event.
A Rolling album is always an event, regardless of the musical or lyrical quality, that counts for little now.
They have nothing left to prove!
In the end this is still a great album, 100% Rolling Stones!
Well my mother told my father just before I was born
She said “I got a boy child coming, he’s gonna be, he’s gonna be a rolling stone, gonna be a rolling stone, gonna be a rolling”
Oh well
SCORE: 8.50
THE VOTES OF OTHERS
The Times: 10.00
The Daily Telegraph: 10.00
Daily Mail: 10.00
Rolling Stone: 8.00
Independent: 8.00
Uncut: 8.00
TO LISTEN NOW
Mess It Up – Whole Wide World – Sweet Sounds of Heaven
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Let’s not even talk about it… 48 minutes of pure energy that not even a band of twenty-year-olds with raging hormones has!!!
TRACKLIST
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
