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Riot on the rocks
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I have seen the most hideous garment in rock-and-roll history, and it belongs to — who else? — Justin Hawkins. The article in question, the third to grace the Darkness frontman’s impeccable keister last Saturday night at Avalon, might best be described as a catsuit with parts of the cat still attached. It was not unlike many others of its type, albeit a type long vanished from the Valhallas of rock attire — a form-fitting, chest-baring lycra number in hot pink and silver, with flesh-baring cutouts in the back — except for the tufts of quill-like hair protruding along its spine. If it were hanging in a gallery, you’d be tempted to call it The Porcupine that Ate Vegas. And if a finely calibrated comedic distance is the price the Darkness pay for the honor of resurrecting ’70s-hard-rock pageantry, the suit was a perfect measure of that distance: a subtle touch with not-so-subtle effect; the difference in volume, as Spinal Tap might have observed, between 10 and 11. The Darkness’s set was peppered with knowing glances that allowed the audience to make as much, or as little, of the band’s songs as they pleased. Accentuating his absurd falsetto (which a colleague of mine once accurately described as "a cross between Tiny Tim and Sylvester"), Hawkins would wind his lanky limbs into elaborate contortions of emoting, like an air-traffic controller possessed by the spirit of an opera diva. And then he’d add a horrified double take, as if his rationalist mind couldn’t quite believe what his rock-star flesh was up to. Still, as in the Scream horror-film franchise, a fan’s knowing weariness of genre clichés was no impediment to being slayed — the Darkness were a riot, and they rocked. You could forget for a moment — the band set against a bank of blinding backlights, with the audience executing overhead "Radio Ga Ga" handclaps — that you weren’t at Wembley in 1982. Their Aeroboogie and AC/DC only sounded undercooked when they weren’t playing their singles — the rapturous "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," "Get Your Hands Off My Woman," and the Queen homage "Growing on Me." Even Hawkins’s bemused warning that it was "power-ballad time" was no inoculation against the song that followed: rock-and-roll, like love, may be only a feeling, but in the presence of the Darkness, one tends to start believing. Beforehand, UK glam-punk vets the Wildhearts — who will return as openers when the Darkness launch a summer US tour in June — nearly stole the show with a career-spanning set peaking with a cover of the Cheers theme, complete with weightless four-part harmony and an elaborate bridge. Noted one bystander, not entirely erroneously: "If it wasn’t for the hard drugs, they’d be Blink-182."
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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