Label: Cooking Vinyl
Release date: 11/19/2021
Album length: 35.25 min
Production: Dan Hawkins
Genre: Hard Rock/Rock’N’Roll
Rating: 8.5/10
You either love them or you hate them. There’s no in-between. The Darkness. Two years have flown by and here’s the new album. Their seventh overall. In classic style. Signature style. In tune with the recipe, or rather the recipes, of a band expertly handling a recognizable musical formula that these guys have honed to perfection over eighteen years. All the trademarks that this quartet is famous for, the boundless gallows sarcasm and the brilliantly well-oiled humor, snap into place as “Motorheart”, surely one of the sharpest, most razor-edged and noisiest-sounding albums of The Darkness’ career production-wise, kicks off with Welcome Tae Glasgae. If that isn’t obvious right from the start, It’s Love, Jim, the album’s second track, will surely confirm that feeling, with one of the most piercing lines not just on the new album but in the entire The Darkness catalog. A razor-sharp rock line built on sacred simplicity, which Dan Hawkins first had to come up with. And that’s not always an easy feat. Stay elemental! That’s what counts.
“Motorheart” is short, just over 35 minutes. The band is rational here, and incredibly convincing in that rationality, which is very, very good. They’re not reinventing the wheel. The album itself doesn’t budge an inch from the entrenched expression in which the band has been lounging comfortably for the last few records. But like I said, “Motorheart” fires on exactly those cylinders that make us love The Darkness (I hope you’re with us).
Justin Hawkins keeps up the vocal brilliance that fuels all the lucidity of the band’s song dossier, creating that ever-obligatory moment of parody, and, true to the whole development of pomp theater, he sets things on theatrical fire right from the start! In Welcome Tae Glasgae he mugs and grimaces in the manner of the annoying hollering of some early-nineties bands in the vein of RATM or RHCP, deliberately “pecking” the listener (the lover of classic rock) straight in the cerebellum. He doesn’t owe anything to Rick Springfield in Jussy’s Girl either. In short, Justin is once again a comedian without equal, and The Power And The Glory Of Love can be declared the album’s big moment, trying to chase the glory of the hit I Believe in a Thing Called Love, while Sticky Situations is yet another parody-laden tribute to their great idols Queen, and Eastbound to Thin Lizzy. The winner of all the tomfoolery gathered in one place, though, is a rock’n’roll slap in the face with a splash of Motörhead rumbling and thundering: Nobody See Me Cry. If your mouth hadn’t already stretched into an ear-to-ear grin, this song is your definitive guarantee of boundless belly laughs. The album closes with its “little brother”, Speed Of the Nite Time, where the guys have subtly slipped in even a touch of the post-punk of eighties British bands. The title of champion of the album, in creating all the chaos and scandal gathered in one place while keeping a sense of purpose at every moment in a brilliantly conciliatory style of arrangement, surely goes to the title track.
The Darkness are an exceptionally coherent musical unit. The lines of force are brilliantly calibrated production-wise. The bass lines rip, the snare conjures up a distinctive racket, there are memorable riffs with great character, and above it all Hawkins’ exceptional vocal acrobatics. It’s all theatrically seasoned in the arrangements with keyboards, a pinch of Celtic musicality (which is nothing new for The Darkness), and an exceptionally strong new studio achievement from these hard-to-categorize rock’n’roll revivalists of the new millennium is here once again. The Darkness remain the class of their craft, never ceasing to deliver the voluptuous goodies of rock’n’roll revitalism with an internalized sense of sparkling parody! Spinal Tap fans, welcome (back) home!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Welcome Tae Glasgae
2. It’s Love, Jim
3. Motorheart
4. The Power And The Glory Of Love
5. Jussy’s Girl
6. Sticky Situations
7. Nobody Can See Me Cry
8. Eastbound
9. Speed Of The Nite Time
Lineup:
Justin Hawkins – vocals, keyboards, guitar
Dan Hawkins – guitar
Frankie Poullain – bass guitar
Rufus Tiger Taylor – drums
