ALBUM REVIEW: The Darkness gives fans its big, beating ‘Motorheart’

The Darkness Motorheart, The Darkness, Motorheart

Like Orson Welles with Citizen Kane, The Darkness was both blessed and cursed to achieve perfection on its first try. Eighteen years after its release, Permission to Land still provokes belly laughs and horn-throws in equal measure. Its covert odes to head lice and onanism are Cole Porter compared to anything by Steel Panther or Tenacious D. At the same time, lead singer Justin Hawkins and his bandmates rock as hard and as deftly as any “serious” metal group. And of course, there’s the now-iconic single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” which will probably be heard in dive bars and karaoke joints across the English-speaking world until humans are extinct.

Motorheart
The Darkness
Cooking Vinyl, Nov. 19
8/10

The U.K. rockers have put out good music since then, but really, how could any band match such an audacious debut? With that in mind, it’s no sin that the latest Darkness album, Motorheart, isn’t as good as the first. But it’s also no faint praise to say that, out of the six studio albums the band has released since Permission to Land, it might come closest.



The album’s opener, “Welcome Tae Glasgae,” kicks things off on an unusual note (and not just because of the bagpipes on the intro). It’s a fond salute to Scotland’s largest city, where “The women are gorgeous/ And the food is OK.” It’s also a road or touring anthem—Hawkins namechecks three Glaswegian music venues he’s played in the past.

Such songs aren’t uncommon in metal and hard rock—Motorhead’s “We Are the Road Crew” springs to mind—but it’s an odd start for a new Darkness album. Typically, the group leads with either a mock-mythic opus (“Black Shuck,” “Barbarian,” “Rock and Roll Deserves to Die”) or a tongue-in-cheek, self-mythologizing boast (“One Way Ticket,” “Every Inch of You,” “All the Pretty Girls”).

By contrast, “Welcome Tae Glasgae” is an unabashed valentine to the band’s fans. Such disarming candor reminds you of the band’s fundamental good-heartedness, which has always anchored all the glitz and bombast. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the glitz and bombast are on full display: Dan and Justin Hawkins’ guitars grind and growl as Frankie Poullain’s rumbling bass and Rufus Taylor’s nimble drums drive the song forward. Meanwhile, Justin Hawkins once again hits high notes beyond the reach of most singers.



The Darkness shifts to more familiar territory on “It’s Love, Jim,” on which Hawkins wails the praises of an alien woman who, “drew me in with some kind of diabolical mind control.” The furious roar of the guitars and the full-throttle rhythm section shows that the band hasn’t lost a step even after two decades. Next comes the title track, which satirizes macho sexual fantasies and fears as hilariously as “Get Your Hands Off My Woman.” The lyrics—which describe a lecherous loser’s love for a metal-bosomed, eyeball laser-shooting robot—sound like Judas Priest on laughing gas. The jerky tempo and key shifts and the manic riffing make the joke even funnier.

The band follows this up with the more human (but still funny) “The Power and the Glory of Love,” a mid-tempo, AC/DC-style tune about Hawkins’ head-over-heels—yet self-effacing—passion for a real live woman. “Jussy’s Girl” turns Rick Springfield’s biggest hit on its head as Hawkins pines for a high-maintenance lady or perhaps “A friend/ Who looks just like you/ But maybe isn’t as fussy.” Next comes obligatory power ballad “Sticky Situations,” which is enlivened by some discreet violin, a yowling slide guitar solo and healthy dose of falsetto.



The pace picks back up with “Nobody Can See Me Cry,” on which fast-stepping drumming and a squiggly guitar solo counterbalance the heartbroken lyrics. The bouncy rocker “Eastbound” serves as a companion piece to “Welcome Tae Glasgae,” with Hawkins heading off to see friends and family back home in Suffolk. So great is Hawkins’ love for the area that he imagines settling there for good. “The tide is turning, I’m running out of luck/ And it looks like I am stuck/ What makes you think that I would ever give a fuck,” he sings. Should that sad day ever come, devoted Darkness fans might still track him down—the spoken-word bridge features an extensive list of local pubs.

Motorheart closes with the spooky “Speed of the Nite Time,” on which Hawkins sings of a “knight in shining leather” who races through the night to comfort a hopelessly neurotic lover. The song feels a bit anticlimactic, but there could be some comfort in that: The rider doesn’t stop, and neither, one might infer, will The Darkness.

Follow reporter Ben Schultz at Instagram.com/benjamin.schultz1.

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