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| Now those are some Hot Cakes! |
When listening to a verse-chorus type band, I listen for two things: a big, catchy chorus, or a big, stanky riff. Preferably both. The Darkness is one of those bands that either delivers or it doesn't. In 2012, their first album, 2003's Permission to Land, remains their best. It's multitudinous songs with singable verses, choruses, and bone shattering riffs were merely icing on its sonic cake. It was also a well written album with flow, purpose, and lasting impact.
Their second LP, 2005's One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back, lost the immediacy of its predecessor and only featured one or two memorable tracks (the title composition and the fantastically bizarre “Hazel Eyes”). After this the band went on extended hiatus as flamboyant frontman Justin Hawkins went to rehab and brother Dan started the band Stone Gods, neither of which resulted in anything significant other than Justin's sobriety. So now in 2012 the band is fully reunited and unleashed the beautifully artworked Hot Cakes on August 2012.
Before I get going on this rampage, let's just take a moment to appreciate the gravitudinal artwork by Diego Gravinese that graces the outer sleeve of this album. It features three buxom women wearing skimpy, metallic gold swimsuits (of the one and two-piece variety) lying sensually across three mounds of gigantic pancakes. My description alone should've given you an idea of what The Darkness are all about, but in case you are very bad at picking up on innuendo, most of their songs are about love and love-making. That's nothing new for The Drakness, but like their last album, Hot Cake's songs lack that vigor and youth which was so evident on their debut.
We start off with the lackluster “Every Inch Of you” in which Justin recounts his typical poor-kid turned rock star story. This is immediately followed by seven songs that equally bored me. I'm not going to go into them individually, but they all basically follow the same format of subdued verses followed by loud choruses that try to be strong, but come off as weak. Most of the songs start with a solo, right or left panned guitar riff that sounds like it was ripped straight from AC/DC's early catalog and pasted without modification into a new song. Like I said before, what I listen for in bands like The Darkness is unique, powerful riffs and meaty, sasquatchan choruses, and they simply do not deliver on this album until closer “Street Spirit (Fade out),” which is in fact a Radiohead cover, so I don't even know if I can count it. Maybe I would be less annoyed if the structures of these songs were less repetitive and dragged out, but they all conform well within the confines of verse-chorus monotony.
There are some highlights amongst the disappointing drear, mainly in the vocal production which has an anthemic quality very much akin to what Queen was doing in the 70s and 80s. They might've ripped this technique from yet another classic hard rock band, but at least in this case, it works for the better of the album. So why does it piss me off so much that this album sounds like it does, all flabby and lazed-out? Because I've heard The Darkness at their best, when their hard rock tunes blow out your speakers and their softer, yet whimsical, slower tunes keep you enraptured with a story. The falsetto, the power chords, the pounding Phil Rudd-style drums and percussive bass can and have swooned in equal harmony before, yet for some reason, between 2003 and 2005 the Darkness lost their ability to write memorable albums. There have been successful single songs like “Hazel Eyes” and “Street Spirit,” but never a full on, titanic triumph like Permission To Land was. In the end, like fellow throwback rockers Airbourne, The Darkness are not as good as who they are imitating. At least on their first record they had a sense of humor about it.
Note to new bands: don't set the bar so high on your first album that you have no where to go but down. Could The Darkness have outdone themselves after Permission To Land? Yes. There were still lackluster songs on that album and it definitely didn't exhaust the creative pool's resources for catchy hooks, even with it's plethora of them.
Recommended tracks:
"Concrete"
"Street Spirit (Fade Out)"
"Everybody Have A Good Time"
