Live Review : The Darkness + Rews @ O2 Academy, Liverpool on December 18th 2019

REWS are a three-piece pop/rock band hailing from London despite there being a distinct Norn Irish twang about the vocals. They are bubbly, with catchy songs, and the female vocals are OK. There’s nothing that reaches out and grips me about them, but nothing I particularly dislike either. They do sound a lot like Scotland’s Amorettes though, to the extent that from my position at the back I had to squidge a bit closer to the stage just to check that this wasn’t them under another name. (It wasn’t). So yeah, pleasant enough and playing to an appreciative and packed O2 who were obviously finding them a lot more inspiring than me. But then again, my track record in spotting future superstars is a bit lacking, let me tell you about the first time I saw The Darkness………

Back in 2002 I first encountered them as support on Def Leppard’s X tour. I watched in amazement as this screechy bunch of Queen-soundalikes, fronted by a skinny bloke in a unitard made out of his nan’s curtains, pranced about the stage. Was this a joke? Surely it was a joke? Like Steel Panther but 10 years earlier, it definitely had to be a piss-take. But no. Fast forward a year and The Darkness were everywhere. From being completely ignored and not really taken seriously they had record companies fighting to sign them, their first album sold millions. They were all over the radio, the TV, the pub jukebox, there was no escape. I grudgingly had to admit I was wrong, that they had “something”, and that despite me not really getting it those songs that I suspected only dogs could hear in some parts were really really popular.

Fast forward again to tonight and after a history involving drugs and rehab, break-ups, sibling fallouts to rival Oasis and all sorts of other shenanigans, The Darkness are back together and out there killing it live once again. Tonight’s set is a bit odd, in that they are going to play a full album start to finish. Nothing odd about that you may think, except that it’s not their classic first album, or their difficult second one, or any of the three mostly-ignored ones they put out between 2012 and 2017. Nope, they are playing the whole of their 2019 release “Easter Is Cancelled”. All of it. Now don’t get me wrong, on tonight’s performance it’s a decent album, but it doesn’t seem like it’s what the crowd were expecting. There are a couple of standout tracks, the single “Heart Explodes” being one of them, as well as the first song “Rock & Roll Deserves To Die”. I just find it a little bit flat, and it seems I am not alone. All around me at the back folks are chattering away to each other, playing on their phones and even watching the football in one case. Although I can see a lot of arm-waving and bouncing going on at the front there also seem to be a fair few people who aren’t really paying much attention to the music here.

Album out of the way, they move on to the more familiar songs, the chart hits and crowd favourites. This part of the set seems a little faster-paced, a little more fun, a little more interactive. Justin swaps his skin-tight white lycra creation for a skin-tight red one and off they go. I am reminded that although this is very much the Justin Hawkins Show it’s actually his brother Dan who appears to be the musical tour-de-force in the band, and I’m impressed at his playing skills. It must be hard to perform alongside a showman like Justin but, dressed all in cool white, Dan owns his side of the stage and pulls it off pretty well. They throw a bit of a curveball by covering Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’, not one of my favourite bands/songs but Justin does it justice and his higher key actually seems to suit it better than the original. They plough on through their own hits and although they play well it’s all a bit rock-by-numbers. This band are careful not to colour outside their lines when it comes to their performance. Technically it’s good, there is humour and banter but it’s just not getting through to me. The encore is of course the Christmas anthem ‘Don’t Let The Bells End’ and if nothing else you have to give them credit for getting a song with those lyrics played by the mainstream. But I think that’s kind of what the problem was, I expected a bit of chaos and anarchy and what I got was more sanitised and polished. Tonight was certainly value for money, we got a 2-hour set packed with songs old and new. It’s just that occasionally it felt more like 2 years, and I was a bit bored.