New Music From The Rolling Stones, Robbie Robertson, Glen Hansard, and More

By Jon Hersey

Welcome back to Noteworthy, your weekly update on new music. This week’s noteworthy picks are:

Killers of the Flower Moon by Robbie Robertson

Robbie Robertson died in August at the age of eighty, so he never witnessed the world’s response to his latest music. But that certainly would not have changed his love for it: the soundtrack to the recently released Martin Scorsese film, Killers of the Flower Moon. It was Robertson’s eleventh project with the director, marking the end of a fifty-year partnership that began when Scorsese produced The Last Waltz, capturing The Band’s final concert.

Robertson could not have guessed that as The Band was ending, another collaboration was beginning that would last six times longer, nor that his final project would lead him, fittingly, back to his roots. His Native American mother often brought him to the Six Nations Indian Reserve, where he’d marvel at the cultural differences between the people there and those back home in Toronto. Killers of the Flower Moon, about the Osage tribe, gave Robertson the perfect platform from which to relive childhood memories as he spent time with the Osage on their Oklahoma reservation, listening and hatching ideas for the film’s score.

However well Robertson’s music serves the film—I don’t know; I haven’t seen it and probably won’t—it is certainly an interesting and highly listenable collection of music in its own right, blending waterfalls of layered guitars with traditional Native American instruments. It thus conjures images not only of the tribe but the story’s white men (who, from what I gather, are the film’s villains—who could have guessed?). Such tracks as “Osage Oil Boom” and “Reign of Terror” are vaguely foreboding, evoking a stiff resolve to grit one’s teeth and see through some unpleasant task. On the other hand, “My Land . . . My Land” and “The Wedding” are upbeat and even pretty, particularly the gorgeous cello solo on the latter.

So, if like me, you’re happy to press film music into foreign service, you might find Robertson’s last hurrah a pleasant soundtrack for anything from yoga to a contemplative drive or a brainstorming session. It’s a fitting musical epitaph, bringing its creator full circle and, however unintentionally, capturing both the sour and the sweet of life.

All That Was East Is West of Me Now by Glen Hansard

“It’s a dangerous lie that we’ve got endless time . . . in this short life,” sings Robertson’s sometime-collaborator Glen Hansard on his new album—released, coincidentally, the same day as Robertson’s final effort. Nor is this the album’s only instance of strangely fortuitous timing. Hansard’s vivid and moving vocal on the opening track, “The Feast of St. John,” speaks of “heroes returning, all but one,” counsels listeners not to “go down when you’re lit on by sorrow,” and commands, “Oh, monsters begone!” Although written for Hansard’s friend who died at sea, it’s impossible, in late October 2023, to hear of monsters—and the hope that “they all fall together”—and not think of the barbarian hordes of Hamas that recently invaded Israel.

Other timely references were intentional: “Armed to the teeth, here come the holy men . . . Hijabs are burning, Roe v. Wade keeps overturning. It’s women’s hour, storm the mighty halls of power.” As are many songs on the album, that one, “Down on our Knees,” is laced with religious references, some of which convey a deservedly negative evaluation, others of which are less clear. If you can forgive the vagueness or, perhaps, even approval of some religious ideas, there’s much beauty and power here. The Irishman’s seventh album sounds like a stormy day among the rocks and the waves, but Hansard is firm in the face of melancholy, staring it down and wringing out a poignant victory.

Hackney Diamonds by The Rolling Stones

Another bold song about justice and properly responding to evil comes, however unexpectedly, from The Rolling Stones, on the band’s first release in eighteen years, Hackney Diamonds. On “Live by the Sword,” Mick Jagger sings:

If you live by the sword, gonna die by the sword

If you live by the gun, you gonna die by the gun

If you live for the knife, well, you’re gonna get stabbed

Run into the law, well, you’re gonna get nabbed

If you live for revenge, gonna feel the backlash

If you live to be cruel, gonna bite you in the ass

I’m gonna treat you right

I’m gonna treat you good

The undertone makes it clear just exactly what “good” means here. “Angry” and “Bite My Head Off” are two more hard-driving tunes about responding to unjust attacks—the latter of which features a fuzz bass line by none other than Paul McCartney. And as if that weren’t enough supergroup star power, Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder join the Stones for “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” which turns into a sing-off between Jagger and Miss Poker Face, who push each other into the stratosphere (not quite to Merry Clayton heights, though). For an eighty-year-old who’s had his fair share of abuse, Jagger holds his own (alas, with a bit of somewhat noticeable vocal tuning).

Given all that energy, it’s perhaps surprising that two of the album’s standout tracks are among its most stripped down. “Dreamy Skies” sounds like entering an Old West saloon wearing spurred boots. This country-tinged tune is all about leaving society behind for a while and retreating to the wilderness to get some peace of mind. It’s the band’s ode to the digital detox, complete with a harmonica solo that whistles like a crackling campfire. “Rolling Stone Blues” is a simple but moving rendition of the song that, in a sense, started it all—the Muddy Waters tune after which a few young blues fans from Hackney (a London borough) named their band all those sixty-plus years ago. Could there be a better ending to what may be the Stones’ last album?

Not that I’m counting them out. Hackney Diamonds (a reference to the rough-and-tumble neighborhood and, specifically, glass shattered by thieves there) shows that, somehow, the band still has something left in the tank. Moreover, that “something” is novel and valuable. With their predilection to “paint it black,” the Stones have scarcely ever come close to expressing as colorful and youthful a sense of life as did their one-time rivals, The Beatles. But even in some of its darker moments, Hackney Diamonds expresses an energy and idealism for which it will stand out in the Stones catalog. In “Mess it Up,” for instance, the band known for celebrating uninhibited lust takes an admirable stance against sacrificing one’s higher romantic values to a crazed and manipulative temptress, even managing to evoke Michael Jackson vibes in the song’s “really wanna hear it” breakdown section. This is not recycled, monochrome blues rock. It’s the Stones at their wisest and, perhaps, happiest.

Featherbrained Wealth Motel by Dave Barnes

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore,” one might be tempted to say. But don’t speak too soon. You might just enjoy the atypical new release from Dave Barnes: Featherbrained Wealth Motel.

There were sparks of creativity on his 2000 album, Brother, Bring the Sun, especially its opening track, “Crazyboutya,” but these were largely submerged among run-of-the-mill pop-country songs and forms and rarely rekindled—until now. Barnes’s latest borrows most every trick in the Beatles toolbox, but it leverages them in novel and welcome ways.

Many colors in the Fab Four’s sonic palette actually came from the fifth Beatle, their dedicated producer, George Martin, who did the band’s orchestral arranging—for instance, the strings on “Eleanor Rigby,” which changed people’s conception of what a pop song could be. It’s also clearly the inspiration for Barnes’s “Someday This Will All Make Sense”: Vocals float like birds on a breeze above rhythmic string parts that occasionally swoop up to fill out the melodies.

Underlining the Beatles connection, the next song, “The Girl with the Weight of the World on Her Shoulders,” weaves guitar, mellotron (a la “Strawberry Fields Forever”), and interesting key changes into a song about a girl wise enough to know that a man’s affection is meaningless if she can’t stand on her own two feet. Suddenly, the whole plaintive thing gives way to a bouncy drumbeat and “Yellow Submarine”-style horns.

The mellotron recurs on “We Know the Way Back Home” after a sort of “Blackbird”-inspired acoustic riff. And Barnes’s “Sunshine” features a bass-like piano part that fans of “Lady Madonna” will smile at. The song, a bit too flamboyant for my taste, ends in a manic buildup so bright it sounds like the band actually landed on the sun.

Are the Beatles references overdone? No. They’re tasteful and will likely strike the average listener much as such musical devices did when a broader swath of pop artists tapped a deeper well of musical knowledge: They’re delightful means of “bending the ear,” keeping things fresh and interesting while serving the themes this music explores.

If the album has a flaw, other than a few moments of overwrought exuberance, it’s the occasional fusty religious reference. But one could literally tune out every word of every lyric on this album and still have a great time listening to it.

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What’s your take on these picks, and what new music are you most excited about? Let me know what you’re listening to—I’m always looking for playlist recommendations!