Last autumn, I sat down to listen to the new Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds. It had launched around the corner from my house, at the Hackney Empire. Pensioners could be heard on Mare Street that day, grumbling about the camera crews interrupting pavement access to the local Iceland. The world’s media descended. I skipped through a clean slate of excitable, positive, dumbfounded reviews of it online, doubling my excitement.
Three tracks in, I politely bowed out. Not for me, I thought. That listeners, including those paid to do so, seemed to love it felt fabulous for the Stones themselves. What a heroic achievement. But where was the lone voice of dissent here? Then the Pitchfork review dropped, a derisory, agitated take-down which promptly and effectively kicked off that day’s online scrap by suggesting the record had been mostly made for money.
