The Darkness - Hot Cakes (Wind-Up)
Sometimes people should keep doing drugs.
Don't get ahead of yourself--I'm not telling anyone to start banging dope on the couch. If you aren't making a killing now, I'm not sure that anything sold in the corner of a Ziploc bag is gonna improve your game any more than buying a pair of Jordan's. But in the strange workings of things, drugs have aided to the creative genius of some lucky fuckups. Others ended up in a pine box.
When these Brits first came onto the scene in 2003, wearing catsuits and unitards, doing splits in the air, with their long hair, Thin Lizzy shirts, cigarettes, guitar solos, and tons of cock; I remember thinking, "These guys put cocaine on their shredded wheat." Maybe a spoonful in a cup of Earl Grey. I wasn't mistaken. Net nerds and elitists will scoff at 2003's Permission to Land because it isn't punk rock, there are no dance beats, it's not by any means indie, and it wasn't recorded on a TDK-D90 cassette in somebody's basement. Plus, there are falsetto vocal parts. However, the honest to God truth is that Permission to Land was a great record. Is a great record. Almost ten years after the fact, I still listen to the son of a bitch. Even though it has holes chewed in it by rats, I still wear my Darkness logo t-shirt. Some people simply just want to hate you, especially if you're not making them feel cooler for being aware that you exist. Or maybe just because you're having a good time. Whatever your opinion is, I know I caught a lot of flack for championing them. And I knew why. I just didn't give a shit. I loved that record. "Black Shuck" is still one of the best opening tracks for an album I've ever heard.
Fast-forward to 2005, and things weren't as good as before. One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back got mixed reviews and didn't sell as well. It eventually went platinum, but paled in comparison to it's predecessor, which had springboarded to five-times platinum. The Darkness were being pigeonholed as a novelty act and receiving backlash from constant media attention. And I'll admit, while I liked One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back, it wasn't its older brother.
Eventually the Darkness split up. After a stint in rehab, singer Justin Hawkins formed a band called Hot Leg. The other guys (minus Frankie Poullain, who'd made his exit earlier) started a band called the Stone Gods, which was fronted by former Darkness guitar-tech Richie Edwards. It wasn't the same. Nothing really stuck. Both bands went on hiatus. I figured that was the end.
Now, in 2012, they're back--all of them--and sober. And I'm not going to lie to you: if you didn't like the Darkness before, you still won't. Justin Hawkins' falsetto wail is there, his brother Dan is still doing guitar solos, and camp is still involved, but there is a newfound maturity to the band, which may very well be more of a hindrance than their initial immaturity. They used to sing songs about genital warts, masturbating, doing blow, badminton, ping-pong, octopedes, beasts in Blythburg, a lot of booze, and a whole lotta cunts. It was fun. That's not really happening on this LP. Not to say that Hot Cakes isn't fun--it's just a different kind of fun.
I was sure leadoff track "Every Inch of You" was going to be an ode to their collective wankers. But it's not. It's balls deep in personal nostalgia. Hawkins sings, "Oh baby I was a loser/Several years on the dole/An Englishman with a very high voice/Doing rock n' roll" over a textbook classic rock groove. Very AC/DC. Nothing new at all. Hawkins continues, "There are seas of sleeveless t-shirts/Queues around the block/And every man, woman and child/Wants to... suck my cock." It's hard to argue that a band has matured when the singer is saying everyone's lips are parted for his purple-headed pontiff; but you've gotta have some cheeky bravado and barroom toilet humor if you're a band known for it. The song is good. It's catchy. It's got an unapologetic underdog vibe to it. You'll be humming the chorus by the second time it comes around. Not an opener as good as "One Way Ticket," and definitely not as good as "Black Shuck." Good enough to play again though.
"Nothin's Gonna Stop Us" gives weight to "the straight Queen, or the gay AC/DC" kick-in-the-teeth nickname the Darkness has had the pleasure of living with for years. A layered chorus arrangement gives it (the assumed) Freddie Mercury stamp of approval, and the brothers Hawkins' guitar work is right up there with that of the brothers Young (Angus and Malcolm) of that little rock band from Sydney. The guitar work on "With A Woman" receives the same compliment.
My pick for album standout is "Living Each Day Blind." It has the same feel as "Love Is Only a Feeling" from Permission. At first, I found it difficult to take anything Hawkins sang remotely seriously--which is not an attack on the band's musicianship in the least. They're all excellent. But I remember when "Growing On Me" first dropped. I thought it was a throwback to 70's radio-rock melodrama and corn, a song fitting comfortably between FM staples like "Feels Like the First Time" by Foreigner and "Alright Now" by Free (even "Bad Company" by Bad Company, or pretty much anything sung by Paul Rodgers). But the joke was on me. It's not a love song. It's a guy singing about something growing on the head of his dick. And I know I was laughing when the truth came out. I liked it even more.
My point is that when Hawkins broke into falsetto with the line "and we've got nowhere left to be" my initial reaction was to brace myself for something relatively humorous about cunnilingus or felatio or the clap, something I'd laugh at for a minute but ultimately forget because I'd heard their dick and fart jokes before. However, when the chorus followed with "There's nothing left for us here, let's face it/We're losing sight of our dream, let's chase it/Leave our mediocre lives behind/Living each day blind/I'm sick of struggling to get through it/The time for talking is over, let's do it/Nothing you can do will change my mind/Living each day blind," I fucking believed him, because I've felt that way about someone before, and maybe you have too. Ultimately, it didn't work out for me, but I still remember the "fuck it, let's do it" credo. I replayed the song several times. Hearing the inflection in his voice, the sentiment in a generic but heavy lyric like "it's the end of the line," made me a believer. This is the maturity I mentioned before.
In all honesty, Hot Cakes is a record full of love songs with D-cup sized guitars. Casual fans looking for the pomp and flamboyance of the "gay AC/DC" will find that, but it's not the same late-night romp as before. It's not just a bunch of tickling and tongues in the ear. There are feelings involved now, and I think they're actually for real, not just lust. Rehab, heartbreak, and capsizing dreams makes it harder to find the humor in things. The same shit just isn't as funny as before. Then again, remember that line from "Verbal" Kint in The Usual Suspects? "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Maybe that's the reality of the Darkness: tricking the world into believing they're singing about the heart, when really it's still a bunch of dicks and farts. Whatever the truth is, frankly, I don't give a shit. This is a goddamned good record.