The Darkness - One WayTicket To Hell ... AndBack

Thu 1st Dec, 2005 in Music Reviews

And so they’re back. Sans Frankie, the UK’s hardest working bunch of unitard-sportin’ rockers – The Darkness – return with their second album, One Way Ticket To Hell … And Back. With cover art that looks ripped from a Jim Steinman project – and I’m sure that a collaboration can’t be that far away – the band are intent on proving to the world that it’s OK to rock like it’s 1989.

Leaving aside the oxymoronic title for a moment, it’s worth noting that The Darkness face, in the release of this album, a bigger than usual dose of second-album-syndrome. Most bands find it difficult to release their second album, with the accepted theory holding that the first album’s the disc that bandmembers have been working their whole lives towards, while the second is the one that sees them thrown back on their resources, attempting to create something new. This is something that’s doubly difficult to approach when your acclaim has been built – as The Darkness’ has – on something that’s perhaps more shtick than song writing ability.

Thankfully, the band’s been able to deliver something that – while nowhere near as dazzling as their debut, which clad Thin Lizzy and AC/DC in sequinned undershorts – gives an indication that they’re likely to have a longer career than those critics who’d set their Warholian watches to count down the band’s 15 minutes would have you believe.

The album begins on no less an absurd note than you’d expect: a chorus of voices and a pan-pipe soloist evoke memories of Nescafe ads past before the sounds of chopping up cocaine (in stereo!) follow, leading into One Way Ticket, the Def Leppard-esque album opener, and earnest hymn to the debilitating effects of racking-up. The chunky chords of the song’s rhythm are offset with cowbell so emphatic that it surely brings to mind Christopher Walken’s turn on Saturday Night Live, in the guise of a record producer, saying that he’s got a fever that can only be cured by more cowbell. It’s a stupidly large song, full of sitar breakdowns, and full-throated references to hell, and a comfortable reminder that there’s some truth in the old saw that if it ain’t broke, y’shouldn’t fix it.

It’s in the album opener that the difference in production between this album and The Darkness’ debut makes itself known. Twiddling the knobs on this outing is Roy Thomas Baker, who’s otherwise known as the guy who’s responsible for the production on Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which is perhaps the most perfect marriage of pomposity and rock yet recorded. He’s also worked with Hawkwind, Journey, Cheap Trick and – in a slightly more pared-back way – The Cars, so there’s little doubt that creating stadium anthems is second-nature to the guy. However, it’s dubious that he’s ever worked with a band who include the shouted line “STICK IT UP YOUR FUCKING NOSE!” in their opening salvo.

Yes, the opener’s that OTT. It’s also pretty indicative of where The Darkness have been since their last full-length release – while an anti-drug tune existed on Permission To Land (The jaunty Givin’ Up), it was buried a little down the running order. Here, human frailty’s served up first. It’s a long way from the demonic hounds of yore, but remember: this is a band who almost broke up, and whose lead singer reportedly underwent therapy during the inter-album hiatus, so it’s understandable that there’d be a bit more human content. (Still, if they can work a song about a giant kraken into their next release, that should redress the balance somewhat.)

Human frailty is peppered throughout the album, so the opener’s not just a once-off. Hair , and the loss of it – surely every rockstar’s nightmare (I’m looking at you, David Lee Roth, and at you, Nick Cave) – is a recurrent theme, most notably on the hilarious Bald, which manages to express frontman angst while throwing in a sly reference to Do They Know It’s Christmas?. Flawed and fabulous. Girlfriend, weird cross between Bee Gees-produced disco and the good-time boogie stomp of performers like T-Rex or Gary Glitter, tells the story of love lost, while featuring possibly the best Prince-like exhortation to listen to a song of love:

I love you, I love you, I love you so much so much
Listen to my synthesizer!

In general, there’s more of a kitchen-sink attraction on this outing: Hawkins sings about pub scrubbers, about balding, and about paramours with flabby “dinner lady arms”. There’s a bit less of the fantastic on this album, and more about failing. And as such, it gives the fun confection the band laboured long and hard to create initially, a bit of an uncomfortable dark side.

Of  course, that’s not all there is. The ghost of Freddie Mercury looms large over the proceedings. Given the album’s producer, this isn’t difficult to accomplish. It’s unsurprising, then, that one of the most Queenlike song of the album is the Britcentric English Country Garden, a tune that marries three of Mercury’s trademarks: hyperactive piano, schoolboy cock-marrow humour and investigation of what’s quintessentially English. And they manage to pull it off with a little more verve than Queen do themselves, these days.

The playing on the album is as solid as you’d expect. Big drums dominate the tracks, while hyper-harmonised guitars provide Bill and Ted-approved solos of technical stupidity. Hawkins’ vocals haven’t improved, but then, they were pretty much perfectly suited to his just-this-side-of-pisstakery position anyway. If anything, his falsetto is edging more towards Kate Bush territory, which provides an even more androgynous aspect to his delivery. It’s strongly performed, and fits to type, but it doesn’t necessarily jump out and bite you.

The album’s suitably different from its predecessor to ensure that they’re not labelled as just a one-trick pony. There’s signs of growth here, but more than anything, they’re tied to recording budget more than actual songwriter maturity. (Which, when you think about it is just as well: without the ooh-er missus element to their songwriting, The Darkness would be the lumbering, soulless roadshow that some of the bands they’re aping have become.)

However, One Way Ticket To Hell … And Back begs the question: how long can The Darkness keep this up? Their style of music is delightfully dumb, but emulation’s only a cowbell-beat away from parody. That’s not to say that they’d suddenly find the synthetic rug labelled “career” yanked out from under them should they become what they’re not-so-subtly referencing – Status Quo and Queen are still touring, after all – but it would certainly be a shame were they to lose their edge.

Still, it’s a blessing that the band exercise restraint, which is curious when you consider how readily they embrace excess. The album’s a trim 35-odd minutes long, which is enough to give listeners a lovely dose of overproduced overkill, but not long enough for the band to wear out their welcome, or to give you a falsetto-induced headache. In record-taping parlance, the whole shebang’d fit on one side of a C-90, allowing you to put a copy of High Voltage on the other side, for a perfect marriage.

Hell, it’s almost as if the band expect you to do that. It feels that 1980s.

This isn’t an album that’s going to win over many new converts to The Darkness’ style of rock and roll hysteria. It lacks the knockout punch that their finely-realised debut delivered so solidly, and as such lacks the hook required to grab the unwitting rockpig by the scruff of the neck and stuff ‘em into a pair of flame-bedecked spandex chaps. Still, that’s not such a bad thing; the thing about this band’s appeal is that it’s always been the case that if you have to ask what their appeal is, you’ll never get it. An analogue is Anchovette, an anchovy – and petrochemical – spread: people either think that it’s vile shit, or nectar of the gods. The Darkness inspires no less a dichotomy.

One for the fans then? Yep. But hey – The Darkness is one band that has always, unashamedly been dedicated to rockin’ their fans, and not giving a fuck about anyone else. Hipsters won’t dig this, but when it’s so obvious – as it is here – that the artist is crafting an album for those who wear Def Leppard shirts out of love, not out of fashion, does it really matter? With One Way Ticket To Hell … And Back, the band’s proven that they’re not about to disappear in a crowd of flashpot smoke and boa feathers, but the question remains – where do they go from here? While it’s a good follow-up, another album like this could knobble the band’s chances at staying first choice for rock-n-roll tongue-in-cheek fun.

And that’d be a shame. Some bastard’s got to kick against the Coldplays of this world to remind them that rock can sometimes just be about the big riffs and the stage show, and the glorious stupidity of it all – and who more fitting (or more absurd) than Justin Hawkins and his troupe of headbangers?