Songs are rarely as “side one, track one” as the Rolling Stones’s new single Angry, which kicks off Hackney Diamonds, the band’s long-awaited full-album return to the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership after 18 years.
The Stones were hardly ones for creeping quietly around the door – Sympathy for the Devil, Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter and Brown Sugar have all teed albums off in the past – but Angry kicks it off the hinges with an opening riff that is instantly, inimitably theirs. In key and mood, it somewhat recalls another album opener: Start Me Up, which opened Tattoo You. But despite the band’s advanced age today, that 1981 song now sounds rather leisurely in comparison with Angry’s tight, energised strut.
