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Album shows Darkness in new light

By SEAN DALY
Published December 4, 2005

REVIEW: The Darkness, One Way Ticket to Hell . . . and Back (Atlantic) GRADE: C

When glam-rock revivalists the Darkness first mooned the world with their below-the-belt power chords, frisky lyrics and spandex getups, a good part of the fun was guessing whether the randy Brits were seriously stoopid or merely winking behind their hair extensions.

The quartet's raunchy debut, 2003' s Permission to Land , was a multiplatinum world-beater, a throwback salute to the late-'70s crossroads of stoner rock and hair metal. Flaxen-haired howler Justin Hawkins, the falsetto-loving frontman, came off as the delinquent love child of Freddie Mercury and Tiny Tim (the creepy ukulele guy, not the Dickensian waif). Hawkins, also the band's lead guitar shredder, was a hoot, primarily because he seemed so blissfully earnest about his right to rawk.

Unfortunately, on the ne w One Way Ticket to Hell . . . and Back , the guessing game is pretty much over. The Darkness, it seems, was Spinal Tapping us on the shoulder the whole time. It's a sham, a put-on. If you don't believe me, just check out the cut affectionately titled Knockers. Or Bald, a gothic storm about male pattern baldness. Or Dinner Lady Arms , a song about a former paramour who put on a few pounds; it might as well be called Big Bottom .

Don't get me wrong: This Is Spinal Tap is a great movie, but there's a reason I don't own the soundtrack - or, for that matter, any "Weird" Al Yankovic albums . And yes, you can make the argument that a song such as Motley Crue' s Girls, Girls, Girls is certainly laughable. But the thing is, Nikki Six x actually felt strongly about "long legs and burgundy lips."

Oh well. At the very least, the Darkness went well out of its way to make what is basically a novelty record. It hired Roy Thomas Baker - the dude who produced Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - to oversee the sophomore effort. In late-'70s style, Baker isolates the swaggering guitar parts and Hawkins' dirty-angelic vocals, which are layered, and layered again, until there's an operatic sea of rockers cooing in your headphones.

It all sounds pretty good; Hawkins and lil' brother Dan, his main writing partner, are obviously talented blokes. Opening cu t One Way Ticket is a chugga-chugga travelogue about cocaine addiction that opens with the sound of some poor dude sniffing his brains out. The song cooks along fairly well: the cowbell, the sitar solo, the fist-pounding chorus. But when it comes to the lyrics, the band gets a bad case of Monty Pythonitis.

The biggest single from Permission to Land was the rambunctious but otherwise sincere I Believe in a Thing Called Love . So it makes sense that the best tracks on the new disc are also the relatively straight love songs. The orchestra-fortified Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time is Meat Loafian in its sprawling grandeur. And Is It Just Me? once again finds a swarthy Hawkins fumbling for the right words of seduction, pairing "eyes" and "thighs," and "Vatican" and "Yemen."

It might be dumb. But at least it's honest.

-- Sean Daly can be reached at sdaly@sptimes.com or 727 893-8467. His blog is at www.sptimes.com/blogs/popmusic.

[Last modified December 4, 2005, 01:18:20]