It's possible to separate successful rock bands into two categories: those that truly embraced the madness and extravagance of the genre, and those with a good sense of humor that turned the rockstar persona into a captivating enough hyperbole to fall into the first group, as is the case with The Darkness .
From their successful debut album, with the irresistible high notes of "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" on Permission to Land (2003), to their most recent album, the English band had to survive the clichés of band instability, drug abuse, the end of everything, until their glorious return in the last decade. After that, not even the suffocating loneliness of going through a pandemic could diminish the brilliance and the desire to take risks in Motorheart (2021), which has a taste of a fresh start after almost 20 years as a band and their return to the stage.
Released in November 2021, the band's seventh studio album delivers all the irresistible glamour and energy of classic, bold hard rock, satirical and completely serious in its purpose of delivering good music. As one fan summed it up well in the comments of the "Jussy's Girl" music video: "It's comforting that there's still a band that can rock like it's 1985... And have a sense of humor."
A few days after the album's release, bassist Frankie Poullain spoke with Wikimetal about returning to the stage and the new work. Sitting comfortably on a hotel bed, the musician had just finished performing with the band in Cambridge, England. "The last shows were like the old days, before the pandemic, people quickly forget [their problems] and remember to enjoy themselves," he said.
The topic of possible shows here didn't take long to come up. In 2011, the year of The Darkness' return, the band was in Brazil for the only time, called upon as the opening act for Lady Gaga in the country, passing through three cities: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, as the bassist listed in a surprising pronunciation for a Brit.
With the new tour, new offers from promoters here have appeared, but the volatility of the pandemic has not yet allowed a return with a "proper" tour of the band in South America – something that is definitely on the radar.
“It was raining a lot in São Paulo, but people were singing along, nobody cared about the rain, it was a tropical rain, something we don't have here,” she spontaneously recalled. I told her that it had been the first concert of my life. “Wow, I was describing the concert you were at, how funny. It had a good energy, didn't it?”
The Darkness follows its own safety protocols on tour, with stricter safety measures than those governmental – and considered too rigid by British Lion , the band led by Steve Harris of Iron Maiden , who gave up touring with the group last year because of these protocols, as reported by Loudwire . “It’s just out of respect for people and to make everything work out. We’re doing the best we can,” he said simply.
Precisely because of prioritizing health safety, Motorheart was composed separately, with the virtual exchange of tracks and ideas, a novelty for The Darkness. Despite this challenge, the quality of the songs was not affected, perhaps in part due to the reverse psychology approach that permeates the album, from the lyrics to the music videos.
Explaining the challenge of being original in the creative process of ironic videos like “It’s Love, Jim” or “Jussy’s Girl,” Frankie reveals this logic for the first time in the conversation. “We use reverse psychology: we try to make the worst possible clip because it’s so much fun to reimagine these videos where people cared less, had a charming naiveté,” he observed. “It’s a mix of good taste and bad taste.”
In the lyrics, spearheaded by vocalist Justin Hawkins , there's a game where entertainment is guaranteed for the listener, but the speaker's true intentions lie between the lines. "Justin likes silliness, he likes to play with stupidity, but there's something very intelligent about it, constantly going from one extreme to the other. I think it's something interesting and original," analyzed the bassist. "It's never what you think."
To the inattentive listener, "Motorheart" is a modern-day sexist absurdity that extols the advantages of acquiring a sex doll instead of attempting a consensual relationship with a woman, but the irony lies precisely in the scathing critique of society's desire to mold human beings according to selfish desires.
Despite seemingly superficial lyrics about cars and women, the bassist claims the band never actually writes about those themes. “It’s different from American hard rock bands. That’s what killed heavy metal, in a way: it was simply meaningless. That’s what killed traditional rap too; it just became a bunch of boring crap.”
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