Glam balls of fire! The Darkness are back with eighth album ‘Dreams on Toast’
The band return with a new album.
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Photo: Press
It perhaps cannot be overstated the dominance English hard rock band The Darkness had over the youth of the early 2010s – or the music scene in general, for that matter. Their debut album, a glam rock affair named Permission to Land, has sold over 1.3 million copies in the United Kingdom alone. Tracks like I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Growing On Me, and Love Is Only a Feeling are ingrained in any twenty or thirty-something today.
The four-piece, fronted by Justin Hawkins, have won Brit awards, battled drug addiction, disbanded, reformed, and released seven albums to date. Until now. Enter, Dreams on Toast, the group’s latest hard rock venture, full of chugging riffs, biting satire, cowboys and all the tongue-in-cheek humour of classics like Get Your Hands Off My Woman.
The Darkness’ eighth studio album opens with Rock and Roll Party Cowboy, easily one of the heaviest, kick-ass-iest tracks in the group’s catalogue. Fans of Black Shuck and Mudslide may have found a new fixation here, and the lyrics are laughably Darkness (“I’m a rock and roll party cowboy / And I ain’t gonna read no Tolstoy!”).
I Hate Myself, meanwhile, is a cross between Green Day and The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Hot Patootie – catchy, a little off-the-wall, and a right stomper. The four-piece have never shied away from their love for Queen, and Hot on My Tail oozes A Night at the Opera. It’s clearly made for acoustic sing-alongs on the stage, and it plays the role well.
But, if Queen is the mother of the Darkness, then their father belongs in Aussie sleazers AC/DC. Mortal Dread is latter-day Johnson and Young through and through. This will fast become a beloved album track, at times touching on the all too real as Hawkins reflects on getting older.
The Darkness rifle through quick, easy-to-digest pop rock tracks in Don’t Need Sunshine and The Longest Kiss, the latter of which feels like Mercury’s Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon revved up for the modern rock scene.
The issue with a lot of the Darkness’ later releases (2019’s Easter is Cancelled, 2021’s Motorheart) is that they’re a bit fatty around the second side. Whereas the group’s debut refused to disappoint on all levels, now more generic, funny-for-funny’s sake pieces find their way into the mix. The Battle for Gadget Land and Cold Hearted Woman, for instance, are largely forgettable.
Walking Through Fire is a thoroughly pumping rock number until you realise it’s essentially a reissue of Givin’ Up, the group’s darkly comedic drug anthem from their debut.
Weekend in Rome, the big finish, is an amorphous orchestral piece that, while sweet, offers nothing in the way of substance. It’s one of the weakest in the Hawkins brothers’ repertoire and certainly a far cry from the album’s opener.
Dreams on Toast does have moments of brilliance, particularly on side one. The album has a woeful title – even by Darkness standards – and gimmicky cover, but tracks like Rock and Roll Party Cowboy, Mortal Dread and The Longest Kiss will likely enshrine this album in setlists and greatest hits compilations to come.
The album falls flat only where all Darkness albums do, when the group focus on sheer parody over catchy melodies and thumping backbeats. Tracks like Is It Just Me?, Bald and Hazel Eyes from the group’s sophomore effort were funny, yes, but genuinely hearty, 80s-influenced rockers. In tracks like The Battle for Gadget Land and Weekend in Rome, it’s not clear what the Darkness were aiming for besides a weak chuckle. It’s a far cry from headbanging at Glasto and headlining MTV.
Dreams On Toast is out now via Canary Dwarf Limited.