THE DARKNESS Dreams on Toast Cooking Vinyl

On one hand, while I love big riffs and a nicely moronic lyric, I’m also ideologically opposed to liking things ironically and the very concept of “guilty pleasures.” So I’m grateful to the Darkness for removing my overactive brain from the equation by sealing their lizard-brain riffage with a wink. On the other hand, I don’t like being told when to laugh. So I initially bristle at songs like “Rock and Roll Party Cowboy” that, despite the primal power that guitarist-producer Dan Hawkins supplies, are so intent on tickling that they can feel a bit like manhandling. I don’t need to be told to party like ZZ Top, just play “Cheap Sunglasses” and I’m with you. Opening their eighth album with what’s essentially a boogie-woogie-fied My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult track is a bold move, but one that’s potentially alienating to those of us who firmly believe that true camp is only possible when unintentional (and preferably imbued with the barely sublimated pathos of being either a sexually frustrated housewife or a closeted homosexual in 1955). That said, any John Waters fan will tell you that faux camp can be charming in the right hands. And no one would accuse the Darkness of not being good with their hands. A perfectly constructed riff is still a perfectly constructed riff, and when Justin Hawkins growls with delight, “Heavy metal. Hard rock. Soft rock! Big party!” it’s hard not to smile back.