Allentown-bound rockers The Darkness say new album should have been No.1

EDITOR'S NOTE: Vulgar language alert.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — For a band whose only U.S. hit was the over-the-top, hard-rocker "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" in 2003, you'd think The Darkness would be celebrating its new album hitting No. 2 in its home United Kingdom.

Instead, the performance of the new disc, "Dreams on Toast," is the reason The Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins is losing his cool in a recent telephone interview.

“Feel f—king terrible about that — really, really pissed off," Hawkins said from his studio in Sussex, England.

"F—king eight months of working in this f—king studio — like, it was, ‘We are going for Number 1. This is going to be a No 1 record.’"

Despite Hawkins's disappointment, the album, released in late March, gave The Darkness its highest-charting album since its debut "Permission to Land," which sold gold in the United States and four-times-platinum in Great Britain.

And it has The Darkness on a U.S. tour that stops Tuesday, Sept. 9, at Allentown's Archer Music Hall.

Tickets, at $45.75 and $48.05,remain available at the Archer website.

The album's success, Hawkins said, is the result of a lot of work and taking an unusual approach for the band.

“And you know what? It was a f—king No. 1 record," Hawkins said. "The label — who, luckily, we are no longer with; I’m really putting the boot in here — this is the last time we’ll ever work with them.

"And I told them as much on the day we found out we were Number 2."

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'The songs first'

Hawkins said from the start, the approach for "Dreams on Toast" was to "put the songs first," and the band took extra time to make sure to do it right.

"Don’t worry about it sounding like The Darkness, don’t worry about the audience, don’t worry about anything about the band — use the extra time that we had to write," he said.

He said the band has "basically been in this cycle of, like needing to release an album every sort of two years for the business to survive. And we survive on touring, so you can’t stall that out."

But in 2023, the band did a 20th anniversary version of "Permission to Land," and toured to support it, “so we had double the time to sort of write this time."

"So the whole idea was just let’s write, write, write — really put the hours in. And the idea was to leave a lot more on the cutting room floor, ‘cause we [usually] just about scrape it," he said with a laugh.

He said The Darkness compiled 140 songs, and "just followed the song in the studio and gave it whatever it needed."

The approach even left The Darkness with enough music to an album of the original acoustic demos, "‘cause they stand up on their own,” Hawkins said.

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'Just do what you want'

Just following the songs also gave The Darkness the freedom to not sound like The Darkness if that's what the song called for, Hawkins said.

“I think subconsciously, there can be a little voice, a little person on your shoulder, that kind of thinks when you’re writing or building up a song or whatever, you’re looking at it from the outside in," he said.

“If you’ve been in a band and have seen what your fans like — certain guitar riffs, sort of sounds — it's quite easy to sometimes let that feed into when you’re writing a song.

“We just wanted to ignore all that stuff."

Hawkins said some things picked up from famed producer Rick Rubin is that "you have to completely ignore your fan base, your audience, to make good music. If you ever consider them, then you’re screwed."

“The jury is out whether Rick Rubin is a complete phony or a genius, personally," Hawkins said with a laugh. "But I agree with that so completely.

"‘Cause if you’re ... making music for anyone other than yourself, and to make you feel a certain way, then you’re failing everyone.

“Sometimes the silly things that you do to amuse yourself that you think is funny that you think everyone is going to think is completely bloody ridiculous are your biggest hits, and you never thought they would be.

“And if you actually thought for a minute about how uncool certain things you were doing are, then you wouldn’t do them. So who cares? Just do what you want.”

'Hidden' humor, and The Beatles

One example on "Dreams on Toast" is "I Hate Myself," a racing-punk song of self-loathing — "I really hate myself/ so you don't have to" — that also seems to have a tongue planted firmly in cheek.

“It’s a strange one," Hawkins said. He said he and his The Darkness vocalist brother Justin Hawkins "were kind of brought up on ‘70s rock, some of it glam."

"But, you know, I think rock in general — my favorite rock, like before it was overly kind of androgynous and overly kind of sexualized and overly angry, it’s that specific era that I love.

“And I really include The Beatles in that, as well, it was fun lyrically and having sort of things that make you laugh as much as they make you feel good sort of thing — that feeling that you’re allowing your listener into your little gang.

"Most people would miss the humor in a lot of rock music. Really AC/DC, Bon Scott was just a half-baked lyricist, you know? But when you get it, you know, you just know there’s a lot of people that don’t get it, and never will.

“I’ve always loved bands like that.”

It's always dangerous for a band to compare itself with The Beatles, but Dave Hawkins acknowledges the song "The Longest Kiss" is intentionally Beatlesesque.

“A hundred percent, yeah, a hundred percent," he said.

But Hawkins goes a step further, comparing the making of "Dreams on Toast" to The Beatles' "White Album."

"One of the reference points to making the album, as producer I would say quite often that we make this kind of, in a way, like 'The White Album,'” he said.

"You know, ‘The White Album,’ it’s almost unhinged in how varied the songs are. There shouldn’t be anything that ties them together," he said with a laugh. "It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

“But it works, and I guess that was the thing — you know, let’s not worry about [it]. ["The Longest Kiss"] is a country song, we’ve never done anything like that before. We’ll just do what we think is the right … our version of country.

"The same goes if a song is written on piano and has that kind of feel, that’s going to be the main thing about it. Don’t shy away from it or make it overly heavy or rocking because we’re The Darkness. We just do what’s right for the song, you know?”

'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'

That essentially was what The Darkness did with "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," which is bombastic to the point of being a parody of those 1970s and '80s rockers.

These years later, Hawkins said, “I mean, I love it. It just comes across."

"Like, the arrangement, I’m really proud of the arrangement," he said. "I just think it’s such a fun arrangement, it really is.

"The thing I’m most proud of, though, it’s got three guitar solos in it, and it was still a hit — at a time when guitar solos were pretty much banned," he said with a laugh.

That's why, after pulling out all stops on "Dreams on Toast," Hawkins was disappointed when it didn't hit No. 1.

He said The Darkness knew it was aiming to release its new disc at the same time Mumford and Sons was going to release its first disc in seven years in preparation for an arena tour.

"They obviously were going to sell albums," he said. But he said The Darkness's label "goes, ‘No, no, no, you’ll be fine – you’ll beat them and it’ll be a story. A hundred percent sure we’re going beat them.

"And we’re, like, ‘Couldn’t we move it — just a week earlier? Because we 100 percent know it’ll be a Number One record. They said, ‘Naah, it’ll be fine. Absolutely fine.’

“So the mid-weeks come in — and bear in mind this is when we’re playing Wembley Arena, and it’s almost sold out — and we expect them to say that we’re Number One.

"And then, sure enough, there they are — Mumford and Sons Number One. And The Darkness Number Two.

“It’s so wrong. Artists are never supposed to give a sh-t about this sort of thing, but I’m just being honest. It absolutely should have been a Number One record, and that was all that I wanted.

"Eight months of, like, 16-hour days, non-stop, and the biggest [writing time] we ever had and then straight back into the studio, it literally almost drove me insane, just on the promise that I would get a Number One record.

“And then I could quit production altogether and just play my guitar and not ... worry about the record, and just sit there," he said with a laugh.

“And f—king Mumford and Sons.”