Review: The Darkness, O2 Academy

“You’re all packed in very tightly, aren’t you? Like those poor little calves at Brightlingsea.” Yes, the media caravan has long since moved on to the next fad, but the reunited Darkness haven’t been left high and dry like all those firework indie acts. Despite claiming to be the most unwell he’s ever been while playing a gig, camply personable quipmeister Justin Hawkins is on fine form, with dog-bothering falsetto undiminished as he tiptoes nimbly along the self-parody precipice. “Any cessation of dancing will result in cessation of music,” he warns us later, like a stern schoolmaster who happens to be clad in what appears to be a rather fetching pair of stripy pyjamas and has a penchant for clapping his legs together while doing handstands. “I can’t be any clearer than that.”

They kick off with Barbarian, one of the heaviest tracks from new album Last of Our Kind. But the surprise is how little we get from what is generally agreed to be a strong return to form after tentative comeback Hot Cakes. Instead, it’s back to Permission to Land, which is played almost in its entirety. That’s certainly what this audience wants to hear. They’re a cosmopolitan lot ranging from those clad in Ghost, Clutch and Unreadable Band Name tour shirts to people who look as though this is their sole rock gig of the year. But they all bellow along with every word – especially the elongated ‘motherfucker’ in Get Your Hands off My Woman (“Don’t forget the vibrato,” chides Justin). Black Shuck sees his brother Dan giving it the full AC/DC, underlining his role as purveyor of sturdy riffage that keeps the spectre of excessive silliness at bay.

Newest drum stool recruit Rufus Tiger Taylor (blink and you’ll have missed Emily Dolan Davies, who hung around just long enough to record the album and do a couple of photoshoots) certainly has what it takes to inherit the family business, though one can only speculate on what it must feel like for Roger’s son to witness Justin doing his best Freddie Mercury while dropping a few bars of One Vision into English Country Garden – a rare treat from the under-appreciated One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back. The latter also sees the amply proportioned dancer from the Last of Our Kind video summoned onstage to whip off his shirt and frug with wild abandon. “Nice tits!” shouts an unreconstructed punter. “He’s not a piece of meat!” comes Hawkins’ rejoinder, in tones of mock outrage. Indeed, one of the great pleasures of The Darkness is the quick-witted singer’s refreshingly unrehearsed interactions with the crowd.

An inflatable Santa and snowman appear for the encore, which mercifully kicks off with Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) – the Darkness’s ambitious bid for a Wizzard/Slade-sized pension pot – rather than godawful newie I Am Santa, which they appear to have stopped playing. Their splendidly blasphemous transformation of Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out) into a NWOBHM riff monster follows, along with Love on the Rocks with No Ice, which is extended almost to breaking point. It’s big shit-eating grins all round by the end, despite the nagging suspicion that they now intend to carry on milking Permission to Land year after year.