Easter Is Cancelled/ The Darkness.- hard rock


By Narendra Kusnur

 Album: Easter Is Cancelled
Artiste: The Darkness
Genre: Hard rock, glam rock
Label: Canary Dwarf, Cooking Vinyl
Rating: ****

Imagine a hard rock band beginning an album with a song called ‘Rock n’ Roll Deserves To Die’, because its time has finally come. Well, with British outfit The Darkness, one wouldn't be surprised.

This opening track from its latest album Easter Is Cancelled  talks of how everything has become so cliched and predictable in the current rock music scenario. And, aided by Justin Hawkins’ high-pitched screaming and quick falsetto, they pull off a winner with this song.

The Darkness first made news in 2003 with its super-successful album Permission To Land. Hawkins was hailed as among the best vocalists of his generation, and his brother Dan Hawkins helped create a sound clearly blending 1970s hard rock, glam rock and early heavy metal.

Sadly, the band had its lows, with Jay Hawkins having addiction issues. He’s cleared of that now, and is in supreme form on their sixth outing Easter Is Cancelled.

The album began on a controversial note with religious purists protesting against its title and cover. Musically, it’s a much welcome return to form after  Permission To Land and its 2005 follow-up One-Way Ticket To Hell... And Back. The Hawkins brothers are aided by tight playing by bassist Frankie Poullain and drummer Rufus Tiger Taylor.

Barring a few drab portions, Easter Is Cancelled  has great songs, with easily understandable lyrics and plenty of hard rock energy. ‘How Can I Lose Your Love’ and the title track have a very KISS-like aura, and Hawkins controls his voice remarkably.

‘Live ’Til I Die’, perhaps the song with the most mass appeal, and ‘Heavy Metal Lover’, which talks of the glory of the early metal phase, have catchy, pop-like hooks. ‘In Another Life’ begins as a power ballad, and picks up tempo with Hawkins singing “In another life, I will make you mine”.

The tempo slows down on ‘Deck Chair’ and ‘Laylow’, with Hawkins showing his vocal prowess. ‘We Are The Guitar Men’ begins with an acoustic guitar stretch and builds up slowly. It's a highlight here, with the lines “Were it not for my guitar my hands would both be idle, my brain suicidal”.

The album concludes with the charmingly sung ballads ‘Confirmation Bias’ and ‘Sutton Hoo’. On the former, a live version, the falsetto goes into another zone as Hawkins sings “I love your eyes when they gaze upon me, I love your hands when they're applauding my achievements, Mine alone, I love your mind, you recognise my genius.”

Despite the controversy over the title and cover, this is a clean set of songs. The Darkness have surely come out of the darkness that plagued them over a decade.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gig review/ Deep Purple in Bengaluru

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR  Deep Purple at Bandland  Genre : Rock Details : Bandland rock festival, Embassy International Riding School, Bengaluru, December 17 Organisers : BookMyShow Live  Rating : **** 1/2 We all came out to Bandland, on a Bengaluru riding ground, to shoot videos on a mobile, yeah, capture the classic rock sound. Ian Gillan and the Purples, were at the best place around, space-truckin' on a black night, we danced on dusty ground.. singing, Smoke On The Water, drones in the sky, Smoke On The Water... taan taan taan, taan taan tadaan, taan taan tadaan, taan taan... Three days after British rockers Deep Purple enchanted the crowd at the Bandland rock festival in Bengaluru, the gooseflesh lingers like the whiff of cologne. For many, they have been college heroes, cocktail companions, the kings of melodic power, the epitome of hard rock. Older-generation fans or youngsters, they knew many of these songs by heart. Every word, every instrumental passage, every back-up vocal lin
Read more

Gig review/ Sting @ Lollapalooza

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR   Sting @   Lollapalooza   Genre : Rock/ pop-rock Details : Mahalakshmi Race Course, Mumbai, January 28 Rating : **** You'll forget the sun in its jealous sky, as we walk on fields of gold... The sun had set a long ago, and the walk had been tiring and endless. But everything changed around 8.20 pm when Gordon Sumner aka Sting marched on to the Budweiser stage with a message in a bottle. For the next 85 minutes, every little thing the Englishman in Mumbai did was magic. The green carpet in front of the stage had been converted into fields of gold. The hardcore Sting fans should get those puns, and there were plenty of them who watched his concluding act at the two-day Lollapalooza music festival at the Mahalakshmi Race Course, Mumbai, on Sunday. Some had attended his shows abroad, some were seeing him for the first time, and others had been present at Mumbai's Rang Bhavan in 1980, when he played with his band The Police, or at the Amnesty International festiv
Read more

Gig review/ L. Shankar

Image
BY NARENDRA KUSNUR Artiste : L Shankar & Group Concert : Aditya Birla Group Masters of Music  Genre : Fusion/ Carnatic  Details : June 16, Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, Mumbai  Rating : ***** The sudden excitement was palpable when violinist L. Shankar announced that he and his group would play many Shakti tunes at Sunday's concert in Mumbai. He had already opened the evening with a dazzling rendition of Carnatic composer Muthuswamy Dikshitar's 'Vathapi Ganapathim', and if one thought he would focus on classical fare, that was not to be. Five of the remaining six pieces belonged to the repertoire of the original Shakti line-up, comprising him, guitarist John McLaughlin, tabla genius Zakir Hussain and ghatam maestro Vikku Vinayakram. Together, they had pioneered the Indo-jazz fusion sound in the 1970s, before going different paths over a decade later. Playing those old Shakti classics had a major issue though, at least for fans. They had originally been written for two mel
Read more