Back in 523, polymath philosopher (a job choice that had my career guidance teacher laughing me out of the room back in the 80s) Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was awaiting trial at the hands of goth king Theodoric The Great. Despite being laid low by treachery, because the exceptional have always made the mediocre nervous, Boethius refused to spend his last days bemoaning his unfortunate lot. Rather, he put quill to scroll and birthed On The Consolation Of Philosophy. In it, he questioned how evil can exist in a world that God wrought and posited that happiness is still within our grasp despite the unpredictable vicissitudes of fortune. Things didn’t work out for Boethius, he was tortured and executed, but the work remains so immortality is his.
If I were banged up for, I dunno, some heinous act of smart-arsery, let’s say machine-gun quipping or having the temerity to venture into free-lance scribbling, I wonder how I’d find consolation, how I would retain my ever-tenuous grip on sanity in the face of outrageous slings and arrows.
Perhaps I would spend my Solzhenitsynist sojourn listening to, and taking comfort from, Dreams On Toast, the latest offering from The Darkness. In a world that grows darker every day and seems perilously close to being overrun completely by the criminally insane, we all need a buoy to cling on to (steady!) and a vinyl record at least has the right shape if perhaps not quite the required levels of buoyancy. In a reality where dreams are toast, let the music keep us afloat.
What, then, of the philosophy of Justin Hawkins, a man who has proven beyond all doubt what a sharp card he is with his entertaining and informative presence on the internet of late? Has reaching the ripe old age of 50 softened his cough? Has twenty years in the middle thought The Darkness anything?
The Queen/Crüe riffage of opener ‘Rock And Roll Party Cowboy’ would appear to be business as usual but listen closer as Hawkins rhymes ‘cowboy’ with both ‘Tolstoy’ and ‘Bok Choy’ proving that he has at least stumbled past a library, albeit while possibly on his way to a Chinese restaurant. Leather jackets and Harley Davidsons are all well and good but his protagonist is not all he seems, as he keeps one eye focused on the pool boy in his employ. The tropes The Darkness have previously been accused of promoting are being played with, all while the band rock like a bull on a stool.
‘I Hate Myself’, which sounds like the Quo and The Faces having a knees up while Wizzard horns parp in the background, documents self-realisation, a sure sign of maturity. And as for maturity of the musical kind, there is nothing more adult than the story telling power of country. Ok, the strum along of ‘Hot On My Tail’ (which includes Rocky Raccoon piano and Queenish studio jiggery pokery) does detail an unfortunate digestion-related disaster spoiling a romantic rendezvous (“the rest of that long, faithful night was written on the wind”) but this is not the usual braggadocio of boys-own rock. Later on, they head even further down those country roads with another sing along, bemoaning a ‘Cold Hearted Woman’. Nobody saw that coming.
Indeed and there’s more of time’s merciless destructive power with the man who “wakes up in a middle aged body and to the toilet I must get” in the appropriately-titled ‘Mortal Dread’, a song built on a riff that will surely engender a solicitor’s letter from the venerable firm of AC & DC before it breaks for a bridge that sounds like Axl Rose at his most demented. Hawkins seems almost sick of his chosen career in instant classic ‘Walking On Fire’ – a song made for shape throwing, tennis racket optional – where he’s “under the moon” about making a new record of shooting another poxy video but…but… as the riffs clang pleasingly in the background, the worm starts to turn.
Hawkins looks about him and sees his brother Dan, a man in possession of the greatest hard rockin’ right hand since Malcolm Young headed for the green room in the sky, and the ears of a master producer to boot. He spies behind the kit ‘young’ Rufus Taylor, as proficient at hitting things in time as he is sickeningly handsome, and that’s saying something. And there, to his left, is Frankie Poullain, the kind of solid-as-a-cliff man we should all strive to ape, a well-read wine, kimono, and headband connoisseur who possesses the wisdom to only speak when he has something worth saying.
“I CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE…WITH ROCK N’ ROLL!” This glorious belief cannot be quelled. Rock N’ Roll as consolation, Rock N’ Roll as a comfort, Rock N’ Roll as a bulwark against cruel faith, against the ravages of time. Evil may howl with sound and fury but it signifies nothing. Happiness, as Boethius had it (admit it, you didn’t think I could link all this bollocks up), is still within our grasp.
The defiantly self-sufficient man in ‘Don’t Need No Sunshine’ emerges and declares in a rap, yes a rap, during ‘The Battle For Gadget Land’ that he is a king and proves it by again displaying his “talent on electric lute”. He can claim such royal status because he has been ordained by love’s touch, which really is all you need. Witness first one of the mighty ‘Ness’s finest pop moments ‘The Longest Kiss’, an ode to tantric tongue tussling with an ELO/Queen/Jellyfish hybrid chassis, and then the we-had-a-barney-but-I-still-love-you histrionics of ‘Weekend In Rome’, complete with a narration from Hollywood man Stephen Dorff and a climactic John Williams orchestral flourish.
There is a country for old men after all. Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing. They are The Darkness. Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety.
Review by The Devil’s Wordsmith, Pat Carty