The Darkness
“If a mid-life crisis is in the cards, I can't think of a more entertaining one than The Darkness.” – Pitchfork review of Permission to Land (Rating: 8.4)
“The torment reserved for Justin Hawkins in Hell is obvious.” – Pitchfork review of One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back (Rating: 6.5) (taken wayyyyyyyyyyyy out of context)
Albums Reviewed:
One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back
The Darkness blew up and became worldwide megastars back in 2003 by being the only band to come out of Britain in 25 years to actually sound like they were having fun. They played a tongue-in-cheek style of seventies stadium rock mixed with good ol’ fashioned (read: awful) eighties hair-metal tastelessness, but since they were ugly Brits obviously goofing off the indie scene didn’t hate them, instead hailing them as “visionary” and “different” just because they didn’t sound like Radiohead, the Smiths, or a sixties garage band. I bothered to review them originally because I found it interesting that a band so indebted to “artistically bankrupt” seventies stadium cheese-rock could become so critically-adored in the naughties, and I still don’t consider myself a fan of the guys, but they’re certainly entertaining, fun, and usually decently catchy, which is more than you can say for most bands. Recently their bubble has burst in a big way because a band most people see as a joke can’t realistically last for all that long, and if they’re still together and commercially viable in five years I’ll be shocked. But I still find them rather entertaining. They also like Queen a WHOOOOOOLE lot.
From left to right in your picture above is the band’s original lineup, bassist (WITH A FU MANCHU MUSTACHE!) Frankie Poullain, guitarist Dan Hawkins, his ridiculous, falsetto-voiced (and better than Geddy Lee! Hee!) frontman brother Justin, and drummer Ed Graham. In between Permission to Land and One Way Ticket to Hell…And Back, they fired Poullain and hired Richie Edwards, who is completely bald, to play bass, which sucks because Poullain’s fu Manchu mustache was so inherently bad-ass. And that’s all I have to say about that.
And, onto the reviews!
Permission To Land (2003)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Black Shuck”
This album
appeals to the least common denominator of me and everyone else who might give them
a try, and that’s why they’ve been so ridiculously successful (well, that and
the fact that they’re from England, where every other band is a whiney,
pimple-faced Coldplay wannabe and a band that appears to be having a good time
is an incredibly novel thing…ofcourse, I’d take whiney Coldplay wannabes over
Linkin Park any day of the week, but whatever, I’ve lost my point). It’s SO cheesy and SO over-the-top that, even
though my gut reaction is sometimes that these guys are fucking annoying as
hell, if I turn of my snobbish sense of musical “good taste” (which doesn’t
hold much sway with me to begin with, or else Diver Down wouldn’t have a
10), I enjoy these guys just fine.
Anyway, the way I’d describe what
the Darkness are tossing out here is hair metal with balls and a sense of
humor. Since they know they’re a cheesy hair-metal-ish band, they don’t fall into a lot of
the genre’s traps. The songs have real riffs, and while it’s not like they’re all that super-spectacular or
original, they’re present, accounted-for, and catchy, and so the music veers a
bit away from its hair-metal roots (and make no mistake, those are the roots)
towards good ol’ riff-based 70’s rock, but with a sense of humor neither genre tends to have, which is nice.
There’s no “over-serious, lighter-waving power ballad,” and even the
closest things we have here still pack enough of a solid crunch to not sound anything like “Every Rose Has its Thorn.”
But it’s still based in hair-metal, and this is the biggest obstacle to
one’s enjoyment. Like, “but hair metal
sucked a huge nut, so why should I give a crap about a band trying to imitate
it?” Well, first are the reasons I
already mentioned: that they rock pretty good and they don’t have a “Home Sweet
Home” rewrite on here. Also, the
Darkness know that hair metal sucked, and they know that they’re ridiculous, and so they just push their cheesiness until
it stops being stupid and becomes kinda funny.
You may find the fact that Justin Hawkins spends roughly half of each
song singing in this ridiculously high, ridiculously gay falsetto voice that
pierces the eardrums of anyone within 100 meters annoying. I do too.
I don’t know why the fuck he does it, but it fits, y’know? It’s so stupid and ridiculous that it kinda
works, and so does how he sings all his lyrics in this cockney accent straight
out of a Monty Python sketch and wears Jimmy Page one-piece bangle suits on
stage and talks about badminton and gynmastics for no reason in one of the
songs. It’s a joke! And the bassist wears one of those goofy
headbands with a tail in the back and has a FU MANCHU MUSTACHE! Come
on. There is no way in hell this band
takes themselves seriously.
If they did, though, I’d freely admit that they’d suck, because while
the opener “Black Shuck” is funny and excellent and its three followers are all
winners as well, the rest of the record is pretty pedestrian. It’s nice!
They don’t really produce a bad song here, and the riffs and solos and
melodies and over-arching atmosphere of cheesy Queen-via-hair-metal pomp and
everything are very nicely layed down in a way that I generally approve of, but
can’t specifically recommend. The fact
that the band clearly knows they’re a joke makes everything twice as fun, however,
and though the second half begins to sound like a samey letdown from the
relatively superior first half, it’s all just a neat little fun time. But there is very little variety. Just midtempo hard rockers here, there, and
everywhere, with one charming little pop nugget (“Friday Night,” the one about
badminton), one mediocre and over-lengthy slower and heavier thing (“Love on
the Rocks with No Ice,” which is quite frankly a mentally retarted title), and
two ballads (“Love is Only a Feeling” and the closer “Holding My Own”), the
latter of which comes closest to cheesy hair-metal power ballad territory, but
never crosses the line until the end, where it goes SO FAR OVER the line (The
last sound on the album we hear is Justin fake-crying! What the hell!) that, again, the band proves
that they are not to be taken seriously and are, essentially, a big joke. I mean, not like Spinal Tap is
a joke, where they’re just trying to mock people. The Darkness just see the inherent humor in
cheesy 70’s and 80’s pop-metal and hair-metal and sprinkle their perfectly fine
songs with an atmosphere that says “we know we actually suck, but since we’re
admitting it, and our songs are pretty catchy, we can be charming and fun
instead.” I highly doubt this band will
last, since their whole schtick will undoubtedly get old eventually and they
have about as much stylistic range as a gnat, but they’re fun, and listening to
Permission to Land always provides me a good time, so giving
them a rating any lower than what I have provided would be silly, unfair, and
downright stupid. Everything the British
press says about this band is a blatant lie, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t
any good.
One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back (2005)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “
Everyone
knew this whole Darkness thing wasn’t gonna last, right? I mean, is anyone surprised at the tankitude
and buzzlessness of this record?
Anyone? I figure all the indie hipster
people liked them so much when they started out because they just assumed they
were being ironic. “No one actually likes that shit, right? Right.
So they must be making fun of it!
Their music video has a giant octopus and a 100-foot set of
Except that The Darkness weren’t joking, and once it became clear that this was the case, everyone jumped off the Darkness bandwagon faster than you could say “Queen tribute band.” As is often the case with second albums by bands that blew up a little too much their first go-round, I’m sure most of the reviews of this thing were written before it even came out, with a few blanks left in which to insert relevant song titles. And if this wasn’t the case, the moment things like “album will be titled One Way Ticket to Hell…And Back” (GREAT title, by the way, but almost comically cheesy), “producer of Sheer Heart Attack,” and “pan flute solo” started coming out of the Darkness camp, whoever hadn’t written their review jotted it down in the five minutes before Bloc Party came out for their encore. And while I was incredibly skeptical about this whole Darkness thing after listening to their first album, and this one hasn’t done anything to change that, I’m gonna go ahead and take on the task of defending a band I actually think is really stupid.
Did you the Darkness like Queen? Well, they do. And if they seemed like a kind of general operatic cheese-metal tribute act on Permisson to Land, they have dived headfirst into Queen-worship on this one (something that became obvious when they hired Queen’s old producer, which is kind of like if Oasis got George Martin to produce one of their albums). If you like the way the average Queen song layers 8,000 takes of Freddy Mercury hitting the same four falsetto notes on top of each other, you’ll like the vocals on this album. Nearly every song has this type of vocal production, even when it doesn’t fit (like the ballad “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” where the overweening strings push the song over the top quite sufficiently and a regular Hawkins vocal would have been just fine), although I usually find them at least entertaining, if not tasteful (although this band gives as much of a crap about being tasteful as they do about brushing their teeth). Beyond the vocals, ofcourse, there are things like the aforementioned pan flute solo (which starts the album and is followed up by what appears to be someone snorting cocaine, all before we hear a peep from any guitars, bass, or drums) and bagpipes and weird middle eastern intros and LOTS and LOTS of BIG, DRAMATIC strings in all the ballads and pseudo-ballads that do nothing but provide an aura of huge pomp and circumstance reminiscent of (you guessed it!) Queen. All we need is for Justin Hawkins to grow a cheesy mustache and start having unprotected anal sex with hundreds of HIV-positive men he just met.
Although I’ll buy the argument that the songwriting isn’t as consistently energetic as that on Permission to Land and drags a bit in the middle (like the heavy pseudo-ballad sludger “Bald,” which just sucks total dick), I also think anyone who denies the improved production and variety on this record is just asinine. The guitar player is suddenly able to do things other than play admittedly pretty cool metal guitar cliché chord sequences and solos, for instance (and when he does, like on the title track, it’s still not bad). Take a listen to the rampant slide guitar tastiness of “Knockers” (“I just LOVE WHAT YOU’VE DONE WITH YOUR HAAAAIIIIIR!”) and the speedy low riffage of “Is it Just Me?”, which are both really good songs and part of a first half that I find better than the concurrent stretch on Permission to Land. And anyone who thinks that, while it’s clear they do adore this type of music in general, this band takes themselves at all seriously needs to listen to tracks like “Girlfriend,” a bouncy pop-rocker with absurd string and horn overdubs meant to do nothing but be exceedingly silly, and the fantastic “English Country Garden,” which begins with a boogie-rock piano riff straight out of Bat out of Hell before changing into possibly the best tune, outside of “Black Shuck,” the Darkness have done (and certainly the most hilarious). Dig the “In an English country gaaaarden!” vocals delivered by the Justin Hawkins falsetto choir. And check out the closer “Blind Man” for the dictionary definition of “over the top yet goofily enjoyable.” You have got to be kidding me.
This album will change nobody’s world, and it’s really just about even with Permission to Land (better in some areas, weaker in others). This is still the same silly Queen tribute band the world fell in love with two years ago. What has changed is that while everyone loves to think they’re in on a joke, many don’t like it if the joke goes on too long or (even worse) they realize there never was a joke at all. This is a nice band and I do enjoy their albums as they’re playing, but to say anything more or less about them is retarded. They’re tasty yet forgettable and entertaining despite probably being bad for you in the long run, like a cheap chocolate bar.