The Rolling Stones already had a new song ( Ghost Town) on the Billboard Top 100 and the Top Ten in Britain for their seventh straight decade. The release of their new album of original tracks (one cover) Hackney Diamonds, should add a few more Top Ten songs on both charts. The album is … that good.

(LISTEN to the entire album below)

There are lifelong Stones’ fans – millions of them, who are wagging their ‘tongues’ right now. Eighteen years between original albums was not about ‘do they still have it ‘ – it was about ‘where is it? ‘

True Stones’ fans knew that 2005’s ‘A Bigger Bang’ record was great. The rest of the music world really never heard the album because mass media (corporate radio) do not play old bands’ new stuff.

The biggest surprise on Hackney Diamonds is the return to form of the reason The Rolling Stones became The Rolling Stones in the first place. Neat and tidy is out and the sloppiness is in. Gritty guitars which made ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Respectable’ disrespectful – lead the way on Hackney Diamonds. The twangs and tones of Richards and Wood’s riffs (and solos) are a direct contrast to Jagger’s ‘mostly’ melodic singing. Wood and Richards mess the bed and Jagger straightens out the sheets. That was the bedroom on Edith Grove where the dishes in the sink took a backseat to the decadence ‘in the parlor.’

Hackney Diamonds contains different genres just like the entire sixty year catalog of The Rolling Stones. Jagger and Richards must have sat down and instead of thinking – they just let the music ooze out. When an entire album sounds as good, as cohesive as Hackney Diamonds – chemistry class is in session. In the case of The Stones however, they aren’t the students – they are the teachers.

Andrew Watt is the new Stones ‘producer on this album and the ‘new’ Steve Jordan plays drums on every track except two (Charlie Watts laid two tracks down before his death; ‘Live By The Sword’ and ‘Mess It Up’). Both Watt and Jordan seem to have evicted the ‘multi – millionaire‘ Stones from their penthouses back to the streets. The original bad boys of Rock n Roll are ‘hungry’ and ‘desperate sounding’ on the rockers, ‘melancholy‘ on the ballads and ‘cocky’ on everything in between. On each song – The Stones are a bunch of punks playing for their meals and stabbing everyone with the plastic forks once they are done. The forks are then returned to the Stones’ pockets unwashed. Just as they have been for sixty – one years. Waiting for the next meal.