Performers: Overlaps, The Amazons, The Darkness
Venue: Pordenone / Parco San Valentino / Italy
Date: Saturday, 23 July 2022
The final day of this year’s Pordenone Blues Festival brought the ‘rough-and-ready’ British rock rascals and glam-drenched troublemakers The Darkness to the idyllic ‘lovers’ park of San Valentino. For any self-respecting Slovenian rock fan, The Darkness isn’t even a yes-or-no question. A show this close to Slovenia is pretty much mandatory. Our western neighbours’ audiences clearly felt the same — though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the state of the venue around half past six that evening.
The final day’s lineup was designed to cast a wider net, with all three acts coming from completely different genres and musical vocabularies that share very little common ground between them.
Right at 6:30, alternative rockers from Venice Overlaps — formed in 2016 — took the stage. The quartet of Gloria Piccinin (vocals), Stefano Galioto (bass), Marco Marinato (guitar), and Matteo Ciciliot (drums) spent a solid hour on stage making it very clear they’re a seriously committed, driven, and professional new band with real commercial ambitions. The group served up a blend of alternative rock buddied up with pop elements, ’90s crossover moves, and a clear, unambiguous integration of electronics and programmed loops. Backed by keyboards and effects from the mixing desk, the quartet delivered excellent tightness as a unit, driven also by a really solid tuning — the sound itself. Singer Gloria, who commanded the lion’s share of attention, worked the stage skillfully with a dynamic and emotionally invested performance, while the guys laid down a tight rhythmic backbone underpinned by a modern, fat guitar tone. The band showcased material from their debut studio album “In Your Room,” released in 2017, alongside new songs from the upcoming follow-up — including the bigger hit White Line, played around the halfway point, and their latest Mind Over Matter, out just a month prior.
The Amazons, a British rock outfit formed in 2014 in Reading, jumped on stage at eight o’clock. They’re an indie rock band that forges infectiously catchy chorus hooks, purpose-built for arena rock anthems. Nothing new, really. The kind of band that would slot in perfectly on, say, one of the old-school FreQuency festivals near Salzburg, or on the lineup of Zagreb’s INmusic festival. So — retro sound, retro guitars, and dressed like well-groomed lads whose mum lets them out to party once they’ve done their homework. Jokes aside, though. Their self-titled debut, released in 2017, climbed all the way to number eight on the UK charts. That was followed in 2019 by “Future Dust,” which came in one place lower. The Amazons are set to release their third album, “How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me?,” this September. The band put on a thoroughly competent and assured set and showed genuine, righteous tightness. A solid chunk of the setlist was taken up by the newest tracks and singles — Bloodrush, One By One, Ready for Something and Wait For Me — though the band gave proper attention to both released albums as well. From the self-titled debut “The Amazons” they played In My Mind, Junk Food Forever, and Black Magic toward the close; from “Future Dust” they pulled out Doubt It and Mother. The band ran an essentially flawless show. Sonically and performance-wise. Energetic. At once noisily likeable and musically grabby — with the charisma of red-haired singer and guitarist Matt Thomson being the main draw, both for the teenage girls and for the overall confidence and compactness that defines every The Amazons show.
And then the f***ing The Darkness. Right at ten o’clock, with a set just under an hour and three-quarters. Incredible how packed the venue had become. On 20 July 2022, Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp had sold this place out, meaning some 5,000 people had squeezed onto the lawn. Looking at the whole heaving, boiling mass of people, the feeling wasn’t much different. At least a good 4,000. What is it about The Darkness that makes audiences adore them so much? I’ll go so far as to say it’s the extreme vocal heights of the theatrical Justin Hawkins — that’s the band’s main trademark. His voice. Everyone’s waiting for those moments. Once The Darkness slip the leash and break their chains, nothing stops them. That goes double for Justin, who instantly transforms into a mocking little devil with no equal. Or such a terrifyingly good impersonator that even the devil himself would run. One Way Ticket — anyone who still remembers that ancient video for the hit knows all about the snotty little devil lodged deep in the bowels of the earth and even deeper below the frost line. Yeah. There he is. One Way Ticket, which right from the off had the crowd up on their feet and blew the lid clean off their overheated heads. It carried them away on a one-way ticket,
Lately it’s been great watching young people. They’re coming back to rock concerts. Not coming back — discovering them. And that’s where the hope lies. We saw it everywhere this July. In Zagreb on 9 July 2022 at Kiss, and at Steel Panther on 2 July 2022, also in Zagreb, then on 12 July 2022 in Ljubljana at Judas Priest (and The Dead Daisies) and it was the same in Pordenone at The Darkness. Rock’N’Roll will survive, and the credit goes first and foremost to its rediscovery by a new generation of hard rock and heavy metal fans.
Meanwhile, The Darkness with the unhinged Justin charged on. After the obligatory Growin’ On Me — which cannot be missing from the ironclad setlist — the band played what is probably one of the most lucid tracks from the new album “Motorheart.” The title track, naturally. With a sneaky Thin Lizzy flourish woven in. Phenomenal track. Then came the thunderous Open Fire — a venomous, riff-loaded track the band could open any show with at any moment — followed by the particularly grabby Solid Gold, where the crowd joined a bold and untamed Justin in belting out the choruses with serious conviction.
The band stacked the setlist brilliantly. Every anthemic singalong was followed by a cannon blast. There was the party-time invitation of Friday Night, but The Darkness hit the peak of their parodic buffoonery — and of that quintessential British sense of humour — in the back-to-back run of the eagerly anticipated Barbarian and, a little later, Japanese Prisoner of Love. The latter especially is great fun thanks to the contrast between the rabid, vampirically metallic riff and Justin’s ear-splitting shriek.
Black Shuck was dropped from the setlist this time around, which is practically unheard of. And yet. In the final stretch, Justin allowed himself some room for an extra theatrical move. During the break after Japanese Prisoner of Love, he asked some of the tech crew to bring him a banner someone was holding in the crowd. Before the crew had even reached the guy in the crowd, he’d already hurled the banner rag straight into Justin’s lap. On it was written: “The Darkness – I Want To Sing Black Shuck With You.” Justin told the guy the song wasn’t on tonight’s setlist — and yet. “What’s your name?” Justin asks. The answer: “Sandro!” Justin then ordered the techs to bring a microphone out to Sandro in the crowd. The band actually launched into Black Shuck with Sandro on lead vocals. Justin spent the whole performance just ‘marking’ the vocal at the key moments. Sandro held his own, and the band stuck with him all the way to the end of the first chorus before stopping.
Justin takes back the ringmaster’s role and theatrically quips: “Get your hands off my fuckin microphone, you arsehole.” That was the intro to the closing Get Your Hands Off My Woman. You ‘die.’ From laughter, from all the positive vibes. Metaphorically speaking, you ‘die from all things beautiful.’ At a The Darkness show. It barely gets better than this as a party. Except maybe Steel Panther. “Hey guys — have you ever thought about a joint tour?” Even CUK Kino Šiška would sell out twice in a row.
The obligatory encore brought the long-awaited I Believe In A Thing Called Love to the stage, the floor shaking under the enthusiastic jumping of a good 4,000-strong crowd. The peak of The Darkness’s unique theatre came with Love on the Rocks With No Ice, when Justin Hawkins theatrically landed on the shoulders of guitar tech Ian Norfolk — who had earlier performed on stage with the band on a new track, Heart Explodes, on acoustic guitar (Justin noting that the audience absolutely had to watch his fingers). It’s a well-known piece of theatre, but clearly Ian has to be properly ‘primed’ for it. He carried a bare-chested Justin out into the crowd. Together they worked their way from the far left all the way to the right. And it wasn’t just a quick minute, either. After Justin returned to the stage, the song was theatrically extended with a few more onstage excesses and solos. Justin can do anything. The vocals are bulletproof. Not just the vocals — the range. Insane. There were a few slip-ups along the way, which makes sense given all that boundless energy — both in the solos and the singing. During the final song, Dan’s guitar packed in on him; Ian was right there with a new Gibson LP and everything carried on normally. Justin didn’t go unnoticed either — he was cracking up watching his brother to his right frantically searching for another guitar.
Too soon. It ended way too soon. The Darkness remain a brilliant distillation of everything rock’n’roll can bring to a stage. A fantastic party of brilliant invention, feisty rock’n’roll, parody, and a pinch of glam. The form is top-notch and, nearly twenty years on from the iconic debut “Permission To Land” (2003), The Darkness still hold their status as an unstoppable rock force in the world.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
The Darkness set list:
1. Arrival – taped intro (orig. ABBA)
2. Welcome Tae Glasga
3. One Way Ticket
4. Growin’ On Me
5. Motorheart
6. Open Fire
7. Givin’ Up
8. Heart Explodes
9. Solid Gold
10. It’s Love, Jim
11. Friday Night
12. Love Is Only A Feeling
13. Barbarian
14. Japanese Prisoner Of Love
15. Black Shuck (ends with first chorus plus Sandro from public on vox)
16. Get Your Hands Off My Woman
—encore—
17. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
18. Love on the Rocks With No Ice
