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New Release: The Darkness “Hot Cakes”
One day during college my friend, Amber, sent me an email with a link. “Have you seen this?” she wrote. “I think you’ll really like it. It’s so you!” The link was to The Darkness’ video for the Christmas song “Christmas Time” and I was thoroughly impressed. Amber was right. It was so me! It combined in beautiful balance irony, parody, sincerity, and just that touch of absurdism that I find ever so delightful. I was, from that moment forth, a The Darkness fan.
It was with growing disappointment, and a certain amount of reluctance, that I listened to 2005’s One Way Ticket To Hell . . . And Back. Something had gone terribly wrong with the band. More importantly, something had gone wrong with their music. Was it just the curse of the sophomore album? But no, it wasn’t just the curse, because not long after the release The Darkness went on permanent hiatus. Or so it seemed because The Darkness is back with a new album, Hot Cakes and this time they do not disappoint.
Let’s get rid of the notion that these guys are going back to the “formula” that made them famous with Permission to Land. That is not what is happening here. What they are doing as a band and musically is going back to square one, not to re-write the past or to repeat the past success of their debut, but to re-examine the past. For an album full of grandiose vocals, searing guitars and operatic choruses, contemplation seems like a strange adjective with which to describe it. But that’s what this album is—a contemplation of their previous musical efforts, of their rise to stardom and their decline, and now of their return. Perhaps the choice to cover Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” speaks most to this direction.
On the surface The Darkness has little in common with Radiohead, either musically or aesthetically. The original version of the song is slow, melancholic, and almost grim in its expression of loss. But speeding up the tempo, adding the shredding guitar riffs, and playing up Justin Hawkins’ cataclysmic vocals don’t take away the melancholy aspects of the song, only highlight them. In fact, the entire album seems to be a reflection on melancholy, distilled of course through The Darkness’s own glam rock, Queen-esque aesthetic. Whereas Hawkins’ proclaimed “I believe in a thing called Love/Just listen to the rhythm of my heart” nearly a decade ago, the song “Love is Not The Answer” re-works that song and instead states, “Love is not destiny/ love is not fate.” Is this cynicism or maturity?
Whatever it is, Hot Cakes as a whole is a mature expression of The Darkness’ music. It is an album that requires multiple listens in order to really get a grip on all that’s being said. But for all that, it’s also an album that is an absolute pleasure to listen to and once again strikes the delicate balance between parody and sincerity, sweetness and sarcasm.