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The Darkness
Words: miss amp
Dum der der der DOUF. Dum der der der DOUF. It's a perfect riff. Headbanging
to it is simply not enough. You start to spread your legs - not like that,
guttersnipe - resting your weight on your back leg and bending at the
knees.
Your arms flip to the right, angular, clutching an imaginary guitar;
and in one smooth step, you fling your weight to your front leg and flop
your neck forward. Your right arm is twitching spasmodically between imaginary
D and A chords; the fingers of your left hand are wiggling on the strings
like those of an inept bi-curious teengirl… Fuuuck. NOT doing air
guitar to this is NOT an option.
NOT doing the splay-legged AC/DC kick to the chord explosion at the end
is NOT an option. NOT standing legs akimbo, your imaginary guitar slung
low at your crotch, your arms stretched straight and clapping overhead….
NOT. A. FUCKING. OPTION.
Ladies and gents, open your eyes to: The Darkness.
Their three-track ep I Believe In A Thing Called Love has been knocking
around for a while and turning up in all the right places, but don't let
that put you off, cuz, unlike YYYs or Liars or whatevah garagerock indoor
bullstuff you got on your turntable, this shit is da tits.
I Believe In A Thing Called Love steps out the door dressed in the riff
from Crazy Crazy Crazy Crazy Nights by Kiss. It wolf-whistles Thin Lizzy,
gives Queen a high-five, tussles on the ground with Zodiac Mindwarp, grabs
Mark Bolan's feather boa and self-asphyxiates to create a toe-curling
falsetto, before jumping into a truck blasting out AC/DC with Ted Nugent
and driving off to a cabaret convention in East Cheam.
And watching this mess you've got a bunch of Shoreditch trendies with
'ironic' metal Ts and studded wristbands mashing up against tight-trousered
bad-permed utterly serious Kerrang! Types, and it's beaudiful, maaan.
The Darkness come from the country. It's only right that this ominous,
hairy, growling, swamp-dripping rock behemoth thing should come from the
country. This is proper rock: classic, epic, ludicrous, magnificent.
This is songs about love and East Anglian mythology: hellhounds with red
eyes, Stone Age men dug up, settlements abandoned…So gross, it's
ace, and so uncool, it's way beyond. Best of all - they're not ugly.
Yeah, I know. You imagine a liaison between yourself and a hairy man-rocker
as an aesthetic assault on your sensibilities, don't you? Almost a test
to see just how much vital grossness you can stand. Stench and sweat and
the glorious swirl of losing yourself in his lowly animal mingtasticity
- but with these dudes - at least with singer Justin - it wouldn't be
like that.
Justin's face is bony and intense and his hair is long and he's pretty.
Listen, Justin's got a tattoo of his name on his sinewy shoulder, and
the 'S' has been replaced by a lightening bolt.
Forget your garage rock revival. This is the real deal. This
is Tommy Ionni playing solo in a burning building, velvet rags trailing
behind him in the blaze, a lady in a bustier on her knees suckling before
him. This is early G'n'R, with Slash all grizzly and Axl eminently fuckable
in a 'FUCK DANCING LETS FUCK' t-shirt. This is Freddy Mercury's coruscating
falsetto whipping the tears out the fronts of your eyes against your better
wishes -
- but it's also Spinal Tap, and Ten Benson, and Gene Simmonds' tongue,
and Angus Young's schoolboy cap, and a boy sounding like a girl yelping
'GUITAR!!!!' before a cockrock solo. It's every preposterous and lovable
thing that conspires to create CLASSIC, GLORIOUS RAWK.
If you've ever felt illicitly, shamefully tempted to purchase Tel-Star's
One Hundred Best Classic Rock Cuts…get this. If you've ever nodded
your head to the sounds of the Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater film,
not fickle style magazine) soundtrack… get this. O what the hell.
Just GET THIS ANYWAY.
I Believe In A Thing Called Love is out now on Must Destroy Music
records
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