With the release of their second album proper, “One Way Ticket to Hell…And Back,” UK darling, The Darkness, offers more of the same; this time it’s just bigger and gaudier.
The band makes no qualms about it; this is not an album aimed at drawing the admiration of critics and in fact, it strives for just the opposite. Everything on the retro-act’s sophomore offering elaborates on the original release’s criticisms and perpetuates them to comedic proportions.
From their advent, The Darkness was panned by critics and cynics alike for being nothing more than a Queen-AC/DC rip-off, with uber-glossy production bad hair and an ill-advised penchant for leotards.
So is it surprising that they have come back with the volume turned up to eleven, belting out a slicker, more meretricious sound complete with bloated orchestrations, including everything from flutes to bagpipes? Not in the least. It even seems as if front man Justin Hawkins ordered his leotards one size smaller to facilitate an even higher falsetto.
The thing is, they couldn’t care less about what the critics think, especially not after selling millions of copies of their debut and achieving worldwide fame. In a sense, this makes the album their diatribe against the current industry’s conventions; it’s their big “screw you” to the establishment.
As for the compositions themselves, they touch, for the most part, on the general pitfalls of quickly realized fame: cocaine use, alcohol abuse, hangovers and the plight of having an over-abundance of women falling all over you. However, this time around there is no “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” There are strong points such as the title track, “One Way Ticket” and “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” but without a killer single, the effort falls far short of its predecessor, “Permission to Land.”
Similarly, the lyrics are at times downright atrocious. In “Bald,” Hawkins screeches: “His hair, at an alarming pace / Running away from his face.” If the effort proved humorous in any way, it would almost be forgivable, but with a general disregard for the lyrical form, it is evident that Hawkins has found his “one way ticket” and has no hopes of ever coming back.
If there is one thing to revel in here, it’s that it is refreshing to find rockers jettisoning the common pretensions and instead crafting a sonic landscape of unabashed fun. The Darkness achieves new levels of hopelessly misguided cheese, but it’s not as if they give a damn and their message is just this: neither should you.
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