Stream The Darkness' Hot Cakes here, courtesy Rolling Stone.
Either it just doesn't feel like so long ago or nobody cared they were gone, but The Darkness are set to release Hot Cakes, their third album and first in seven years next week.
In the years since their poorly received sophomore effort One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back, the musical landscape has changed dramatically. Not that they're concerned about keeping with the times; their first two LPs were decidedly stuck in the glam/metal world that saw its heyday a good fifteen years before they'd released their debut album Permission To Land and, with it, their breakthrough novelty smash I Believe In A Thing Called Love.
Let's be realistic; Hot Cakes doesn't really offer anything you're not already expecting from The Darkness. Plenty of riffs, gang vocals, falsetto freakouts and sexual innuendo are the building blocks for the band. Opener Every Inch Of You tells you everything you need to know about the band and its credo. Power ballads are naturally still important fixtures of any cock rock specialist, as is illustrated by the admirably enjoyable Living Each Day Blind. Singles Nothin's Gonna Stop Us and Everybody Have A Good Time do their sworn duty to the Rock Gods.
Undoubtedly, the most intriguing song on the album will be the glammed up rendition of Radiohead's Street Spirit; for the record, they don't reduce the song to gag status, opting to simply give it another, much louder, perspective.
When they do stretch themselves out of their comfort zones, the results are mixed. Forbidden Love starts with some slight Spanish flavour before its chorus explodes into something you might hear over the closing credits of a bad 80's movie. Love Is Not The Answer tries to play it a little too seriously, and comes off a bit clichéd and flat footed.
All in all, Hot Cakes gives fans about what they'd expect; not a perfect album, but good enough for a good time. At the end of the day, that's all The Darkness are aiming for, so mission accomplished.
Hot Cakes is out August 14 via Wind-Up.
Stream Divine Fits' debut A Thing Called Divine Fits at NPR.
The indie community got pretty excited at the prospect of Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs' Dan Boeckner and Spoon's Britt Daniel getting together for a new band, and so did I. Upon listening to their debut A Thing Called Divine Fits, however, I must say I'm a little disappointed. It's not that the tunes are bad; indeed, the album boasts its fair share of fine moments. The problem I have with it is that it doesn't feel like the joining of styles it should have been, more like a standard split release.
It's not that hard to tell what tunes are Boeckner's and which ones are Daniel's if you follow their previous bands. Boeckner's performances are mostly laden with synth, while Daniel's more rock-oriented compositions mostly feel like new Spoon songs. It's like this for the majority of the album, with the exception of four songs; Civilian Stripes and What Gets You Alone are guitar-driven Boekner sung numbers that work because they sound like an actual collaboration between the two chief songwriters. There are also two very snythy, very offbeat tracks that conclude each album's side that may or may not be collaborations, or just happen to have both singing on them.
The bottom line on A Thing Called Divine Fits is that, as much as we wanted to hear what these two indie forces could come up with together, the results are too inconclusive on this album. There's such deviation from Boeckner's style to Daniel's, and such a lacklustre effort at gelling the two, that it doesn't play cohesively as an album. Spoon fans who don't much like snyth-pop should probably just stick with Flaggin A Ride, Would That Not Be Nice, Shivers and Like Ice Cream and treat it like a new Spoon EP. Likewise, Boekner enthusiasts who don't necessarily care for Spoon will want only My Love Is Real, Baby Get Worse and For Your Heart. The only ones who will fully enjoy A Thing Called Divine Fits are those who count themselves as fans of both, and even then only if they can live with the fact that it's less two talented people collaborating and more two talented people showing off their chops to each other.
A Thing Called Divine Fits drops August 28 on Merge.
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