Seas of Sleeveless T-Shirts3 Out Of 5 Stars
Cheesy, Sleazy and Tongue in cheekily, The Darkness make their return with their third CD, "Hot Cakes." (No, not the Carly Simon album from 1974...). From the pseudo-seventies sexism of the cover art to the glammy Queen-sized vocals and AC/DC guitar chunks, they sounds like they've not missed a beat since "One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back." They're half hard rock tribute and half inside joke, with the terrific part that Justin Hawkins knows that they can rock as hard as they wannabe and that they're 100% cool with being in on the joke.
Take the opening track, "Every Inch of You." Telling a semi-autobiographical tale of a "English man with a very high voice" who discovers Led Zepplin who went from "loser" to the man for whom all audience members want to suck in a protruding body part...wailed in that very high voice. Then you get the total Queen ripoff, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us" and the Angus slamming guitars of "Everybody Have a Good Time." Derivative stuff all, and every inch of it pure fun. Even the hoary power ballads come off with a wink. The Darkness are smart enough to know that they possess about as much menace as a litter of puppies and subtlety of any given British Tabloid.
It's that they have this much obvious glee in doing what they do that makes them so likeable. "Hot Cakes" won't break any new ground, but don't let that stop you. I'd take the self-informed fun of The Darkness over the parodied self importance of a cookie-monster vocal-led rock band any day of the week.
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