No that it’s really visible from the self-aware, irony free twenties, but there is a dusty corner of British music history that embraced the novelty single. There were times when you found acts like The Barron Knights or The Wurzels in the upper reaches of the charts and appearing on Top of The Pops; it was a validation of the country’s post-war love for chintz that was embraced right up until Agadoo and beyond.
The why-so-serious backdrop to early noughties music – ninety percent haircuts and monosyllabic cool – made for perfect conditions into which The Darkness could be launched. To casual observers and nearly all of the press they looked and felt like some kind of joke, with singer Justin Hawkins parading around in a jump suit and touting a ridiculously operatic falsetto. To make things better/worse the quartet played a strain of rock derived obviously from Queen, Aerosmith, etc., one that Nirvana and co. had supposedly killed off.
The critics mostly hated them. But their debut album Permission to Land was a distillation of everything uncool, from mythical dogs to after school badminton clubs and their songs were full of invisible pop hooks and schoolyard innuendo. I Believe In A Thing Called Love catapulted them into the spotlight and briefly at least they were a gag to which their enormous success was the scoffing punchline.
The only thing for it after that was a meteoric, drug fuelled implosion and as if on purpose the treble Brit Award winners then delivered spectacularly. The twentieth anniversary reissue here is bolstered by some live work from the year of it’s release, but as with all great albums the joy is still mostly to be found in it’s core, from the pompous but wonderful fretwork of Growing On Me, through Black Shuck’s bluesy opening squall to Love Is Only A Feeling’s worshipful Steven Tyler rip off. Having gamed the haters The Darkness will always have Permission to Land as their clever, hugely fun legacy of what was a good time, but not a long one.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 