It's a Monday night and Bristol's Trenchard Street is buzzing with all manner of black t-shirts, which can mean only one thing – a gig of epic rock proportions is about to take place. Sure enough, soon, none other than The Darkness would add their name to the list of those who have graced the legendary stage of the over 150-year-old (yet recently refurbished) Beacon Hall.
The room was already packed by the time our sole support act, Northern Irish trio Ash, emerged onto the stage.
Their set was brisk, with only nine songs performed total, but was packed with heavy hitters including "Angel Interceptor" and "Shining Light."
Not to mention, their rendition of Harry Belafonte's "Jump in the Line" and their closers, "Girl from Mars" and "Burn Baby Burn," saw the audience in full voice and received the biggest pop from the crowd.
As an extra little observation, I do not think I have ever seen a more expressive musician than bassist Mark Hamilton, how utterly engrossed he was in the music and the shapes that he was carving were really something to behold.
Tension suitably built as the lights dimmed, and the Sons of Lowestoft, The Darkness, entered the stage to the delight of the Bristol crowd. Wasting no time, the boys jumped straight into it with "Rock And Roll Party Cowboy" from the soon to be released, Dreams on Toast.
I suppose that we should be thankful and applaud the band and their teams that tonight's show went ahead, as previous dates in Newcastle and Manchester had to be hastily re-arranged following the band's Glasgow performance where their ever-charismatic front man Justin Hawkins was rendered out of action with a chest infection.
The Darkness are probably still best known for their debut album, 2003's Permission to Land, and the set list reflected this, as it boasted an almost equal number of tracks from Permission and their most recent album. Their venture into the past started with "Growing on Me" where the show briefly paused following the opening notes. Hawkins then encouraged the crowd to put their phones away, to be present, and to have "a little boogie" with the band before launching back into the track.
There was some more crowd work before the next song, with Hawkins commenting on how slippery the stage was. Soon after, sparkly boots were jettisoned, trousers rolled up, and feet bare. "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" then followed and with it, some on-stage gymnastics, as Hawkins performed a headstand atop the drumkit and encouraged the crowd to clap along to the song using his feet.
Sadly, "Mortal Dread" and "Motorheart" were missed, as security escorted us to the cloakroom to deposit our cameras. We returned just as "Barbarian" began to play.
Following the song, there was a brief chat with an 'Anna' in the crowd, who seemed to be saying that she could not hear the vocals properly. Hawkins then retorted, "I'm just pretending, I have a sore throat." He followed it up by joking, "Next time you have any audio complaints, would you kindly take them elsewhere? I'm trying my best."
The night picked right back up with "Walking Through Fire," a track that required full audience participation and a host of choreographed marching from the crowd.
Commenting on his recent chest infection and medication, Hawkins inquired with the crowd. "A 50 year old man shitting himself in white trousers right before your eyes....how do we make that happen?" Hawkins asked. Cue Anna from the crowd again who suggested "downing some briny salt water."
Ever the salesman, Hawkins offered to strike a deal with the crowd. In exchange for "seeing me shit myself in these white trousers," for just five Bristolian pounds, we can purchase a very snazzy laminate with a QR code that provides a digital copy of the new album along with some other exclusive content.
"Such is my dedication to the cause, buy the laminate, and I will shit myself," Hawkins joked.
Another new track, "Longest Kiss," was due up next. There was a brief gap at the end of the main guitar solo where Hawkins stopped the song to explain that, "While we are unfamiliar with the new material, we wanted to workshop some crowd reactions for the gap at the end of the solo." Hoping to fill this gap with chants of "laminate" or "QR code" to help solidify his sales pitch from earlier, the Bristol crowd instead settled on "shite yourself" being more appropriate.
Later on, drummer Rufus Taylor made his way to the microphone at the front of the stage for the 'rugged country ballad' "My Only," where a slide show of images of Rufus and his beloved Boston Terrier, The Don, played on the screens in the background.
The main set arrived at its triumphant conclusion, with Hawkins, now completely shirtless and performing some odd sort of lunge, introducing the song in his best gruff Hollywood announcer voice the song that 100% of the audience knew (and I suspect an equally high percentage came out specifically to see): "I Believe In A Thing Called Love."
After a lengthy time off stage, where the chants of "one more song" from the crowd gradually morphed to "shit yourself," the band returned. Hawkins, now sporting a different white suit, (a fetching Tom Ford-era Gucci number that he both got married in, then, eight years later, got divorced in to prove a point), an understandable explanation for the delay.
The evening came to a close with a rendition of "Weekend In Rome" complete with roses tossed out into the crowd and "I Hate Myself," a final offering from the new album, DREAMS ON TOAST.
All in all, The Darkness provided us with a fun night of some good old fashioned rock and roll, and hopefully, we all left Beacon Hall without anybody soiling a vintage pair of white Gucci trousers.
The Darkness' 8th Studio Album DREAMS ON TOAST releases via Cooking Vinyl on March 28th.
A little post-script from me. It's the start of the school holidays in the summer of 2003. I'm 14 and have been saving up from my after-school paper round. With that money, Permission To Land was one of the first CDs that I brought myself from my local MVC (R.I.P.) record store. I can't describe the feeling of, over 20 years later, having the opportunity to review the show and to photograph the band that were not only a gateway into rock music for me, but who also provided the soundtrack to a chunk of my teen years. It's wild.
