One Way Ticket to Hell ...and Back

by

The Darkness

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Great Sweet Queen, wipe the Slade clean. Justin Hawkins and his bandmates in The Darkness have given us an exuberant reminder of why - when it was really great - the kind of arena rock that you loved in the 70's was fabulous. In fact, even the syrup-stringed ballad ("Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time") isn't a total embarrassment. There's even a couple of hilarious one-offs to make sure you never forget that The Darkness can make light. You get "Knockers" (complete with the most outrageously funny second verse I've heard in years) and the ode to that middle-age scourge of crotch-rockers everywhere, "Bald." (Hey, is this a knock at Rush? Remember "I Think I'm Going Bald"?)

That is the beauty of The Darkness and "One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back." This is serious rock by a bunch of guys who have no problem NOT taking themselves all that seriously. My main quibble with The Darkness remains that their voice is still not gone beyond a too-easily identified composite of other bands. You'll hear an awful lot of Sweet and Queen here, and dabs of Slade, Boston, AC/DC, Def Lep etc, and the final third of the CD loses momentum. But then, if you can muster up the charisma of Freddie Mercury and the harmonies of the mighty Sweet, as The Darkness does on the title cut and "English Country Garden," I'm not going to be the one to tell you it's a bad thing. Add to the mix Roy Thomas Baker's usual kitchen sink approach to the production (sitar, bagpipes, pan flute, tubular bells and a pitch-perfect Brian May sound-alike opening guitar on "Hazel Eyes") and you can't help but get swept up in the ride. Besides, would any of the cocaine-cowboy bands of the seventies even dared to open their album with an anti-drug song AND the sounds of line-snorting?

Best Songs" "One Way Ticket," "Knockers," "Hazel Eyes."