Canary Dwarf

REVIEW: The Darkness – Easter is Cancelled (2019 Japanese import)

THE DARKNESS – Easter is Cancelled (2019 Canary Dwarf, Japanese release)

I’m baffled.  I’m truly baffled this time, and I’ve followed The Darkness through thick and thin!  From brightest days to darkest nights.  From Stone Gods to Hot Leg.  And for the first time, The Darkness have thrown me for a loop.

Easter is Cancelled sounds like their rock opera, their big concept album, with gentle acoustics turning into loud bombast.  It looks brilliant on paper, but in practice it sounds more like Tenacious D.  That’s it — this isn’t a Darkness album.  This is what the D should have released instead of whatever Post-Apocalypto was.

Where I used to shout with glee as one gleaming riff gave way to another and then another, now I hear only fragments.  Only portions of great tunes, not completely brilliant tracks front to back.  The top track is actually one of the bonus songs, called “Different Eyes”.  The guitar work on Easter Is Cancelled is consistently stunning, at least.

This review has been painfully hard to write.  I take no pleasure in this.  It took months of agonising to get here.  I don’t want to hate The Darkness.  I want to embrace them — all four of them! — with open arms and heart.  Perhaps one day, I will again.  With all due apologies to Justin, Dan, Frankie and Rufus, this one wasn’t for me.

2/5 stars

I would be neglecting my rock and roll duty if I didn’t report on the Japanese bonus track, “Dancing House”.  It’s only a minute long and it’s…umm…about people dropping in for a party.  It sounds like bad B-52’s.  Really bad B-52’s.  I cannot discern its purpose or reason to exist.

 

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REVIEW: The Darkness – Live at Hammersmith (2018)

THE DARKNESS – Live at Hammersmith (2018 Canary Dwarf)

“Gimme a D!  Gimme an arkness!”  It’s long overdue, but the world is now the better for it:  the first live album by The Darkness!  Including a few quality B-sides, The Darkness had enough strong songs for a live album back in 2006.  Time waits for no band, but now they’ve got an even hotter selection of hits and deep cuts to draw from, and Live at Hammersmith boasts 19 of ’em on a single CD.  Sorry Japan, no bonus tracks for you.

All five Darkness albums and some classic non-LP singles are sourced, and what a collection it is.  A lot of the newer material on stage consist of the heaviest songs:  “Buccaneers of Hispaniola”, “Southern Trains” and “Barbarian” are like lead, but propelled at the speed of sound!  The oldies span all shades of Darkness, from the hardest cut stones (“Black Shuck”) to the cushioning of a ballad (“Love is Only a Feeling”).

It seems to be, by and large, all the best stuff.  “Givin’ Up”, “Growing On Me”, “One Way Ticket”, “Friday Night”, and the two big hits “Get Your Hands off My Woman” and “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” are present and accounted for.  The last three albums are also represented, and as good as they are, it’s the old stuff that thrills most.

That includes “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)” from this seasonal Hammersmith gig.  Maybe it’s those giant dual guitars, but this one has always seemed to work all year ’round.  It’s just a glorified Thin Lizzy riff with a high-pitched singer, and that works winter, spring, summer and fall.

Speaking of the singer, Justin Hawkins has maintained his one-of-a-kind voice and range over all these years, unlike virtually every other homo sapiens on the planet.  Let’s start a conspiracy theory right here that he is an alien, because the voice is just inhuman.

Would have loved “Last of Our Kind”, though that’s a minor complaint.

Hammersmith fell to the Darkness that night.  Now you can relive it in your headphones, or home theatre, as it were.

4.5/5 stars