Like Moses coming down Mt. Sinai, only with guitars, The Darkness have been put on this earth to show music fans the world over both what we are doing wrong and how to make the world right again.
I walked into The Avalon in Boston this past Saturday night still skeptical. Sure, “Permission to Land”, The Darkness’s gold-selling debut album, was an incredible record filled with the best power-metal pop rock since 1984. Sure, the musicianship on their records seems to be impeccable. And sure, Justin Hawkins has the most impressive falsetto I’ve ever heard. But how would The Darkness perform in the nakedness of a live show? Would they live up to their larger than life image, or are they all sizzle with no steak?
What a fool I was. The Darkness is not our generation’s Spinal Tap. With all of their fantastic hype and their over-the-top image, The Darkness is even more than that. The Darkness are the real deal.
Let’s begin with their acclaimed front man, Justin Hawkins. Justin is not just a borrower of rock’s great front men, he’s actually better. He’s both David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen; he’s both Freddie Mercury and Brian May. Justin is an absolute showman: he plays guitar effortlessly, he sings his incredible falsetto effortlessly, and within moments he gains total control of an audience effortlessly. Even during the highest notes of “Get Your Hands Off My Woman”, Justin never strained. Not even the incredible behind the back solo of “Growing on Me” did Justin even break a sweat.
Justin’s kid brother, Dan Hawkins, the band’s rhythm guitarist, is the real backbone of the band. While Justin took short breaks from playing lead guitar during some songs to interact with the crowd, Dan remained the base of the band and played to perfection on every song.
The bass/drums combo of the band, Frankie Poullain and Eddie Graham respectively, thumped and pounded throughout the night. While Graham had the disadvantage of being on a pretty significant riser far removed from the stage, Poullain was at times as much a factor of the intensity of the crowd as Justin, raising his arms during bass breaks and inciting the crowd to clap along.
The enjoyable opening act, Wildhearts, played a pleasant set, highlighted by their cover of the theme to “Cheers”, which was a hit with the locals. After their set was over, the crowd reached a fevered pitch in anticipation for the main act. A drape covered the stage as the band prepared for the set and, after what seemed like an eternity, the lights suddenly went black. The crowd roared, and from the stage came a blinding white light, followed by a silhouette which could only belong to Justin Hawkins.
The band immediately went into its hard riff laden “Black Shuck”, and never looked back. The biggest crowd reaction, understandably, was for the band’s hit single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. The song started out with a two-minute improvised jam, building up the crowd for the eventual orgasm of two-hand tapping double solos, with the audience screaming along (albeit out of key) with every high note.
The set ended all too soon, but the band quickly resurfaced for an encore, complete with a costume change for Justin (his third of the night). After playing their ode to heroin, “Growing on Me”, The Darkness ended the night with a 19 minute long version of the stellar “Love on the Rocks With No Ice”, during which Justin climbed the shoulders of one of the club’s bouncers and rode into the crowd to continue his solo, like a Messiah cleansing us all of some kind of rock and roll leprosy.
At this point, The Darkness can only go two ways. Either they do save us all from the shaky state of rock and roll music today, or they go the way of bands like Thin Lizzy: an incredible following in Europe with a small but loyal fan base in the United States. Part of me always thought the latter, but after walking out of The Avalon on Saturday night, I got the distinct feeling that this might be the last time I ever see The Darkness outside of the Madison Square Gardens of the world. And, even if that’s true, I’ll take it.
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