The Darkness Get Toasty
Dan Hawkins talks about the band’s oddly titled new album
During a recent video call from his home in England, The Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins lets out a good-natured groan when asked about why his band’s latest studio album has the rather dubious name Dreams on Toast.
“Listen, that album title, I had nothing to do with that,” Hawkins says with a laugh. “It was bandied around as an album title in 2014. I said, ‘That’s fucking terrible — there’s no way we’re calling the album that.’ And then it’s come up every album since. The [other band members] like it because it’s so stupid, I think, and ridiculous.”
But it is now the official album title because of a compromise. “I’m the band’s producer as well as the guitarist, so I was trying to get the guys to record a song the way I wanted it to be done,” Hawkins says. When they proved reluctant, he offered them a deal: “‘If you just do it the way that I want it done, I promise you it will sound great, and also, you can call the album fucking Dreams on Toast. We can just get over that.’ And they went, ‘Yay, great!’”
In truth, The Darkness have been known for their irreverent sense of humor — which pairs well with their arena-ready rock and theatrical onstage performances — ever since they blazed up the international charts with their 2003 debut album, Permission to Land.
Now, with Dreams on Toast as the band’s eighth studio album, Hawkins says it’s still a thrill to release new work into the world. “It’s exciting, really,” he says. “For whatever reason, now the spotlight seems to be on us again; people seem to be interested in what we’re doing. So it’s cool. I think we’ve genuinely made an album where all the songs are really great. There’s no filler.”
Although The Darkness is known for creating exuberant glam-inspired rock, this new album finds the band experimenting with a wider range of styles — which Hawkins says was a deliberate departure. “Sometimes you put more pressure on yourself by trying to be what other people think you should be,” he says.
He thinks that was particularly a potential problem for his brother, Justin Hawkins, who is the lead singer and lyricist. “So my way of kind of taking the pressure cap off and getting him to be creative again, because he probably had a bit of writer’s block at the start of writing this album, was to say, ‘Look, guys: no rules. Have some fun, for fuck’s sake! If the whole album is skiffle, then so be it. Who cares?’ That’s when things started to get moving.”
Hawkins says he was also inspired to take this approach because of his admiration for the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled album (commonly known as “The White Album” because of its blank cover). “I didn’t realize quite how good it was until I really went on a deep dive — [it’s] completely off the wall and varied and unhinged, and there was absolutely no one in charge, by the sounds of it. So as a producer, that was one of the things I said that I wanted to happen [with Dreams on Toast].”
The band members sequestered themselves in remote areas of England and Scotland as they wrote songs on acoustic guitars, making sure that the material was solid before they transformed it into the uninhibited tracks that appear on Dreams on Toast.
“We spent a long time writing this record and picking out the gems,” Hawkins says. “I mean, there were probably over a hundred songs left on the cutting room floor. It’s no surprise that the ones that made it are the ones that we had the most fun writing and recording.”
He hopes that the joy they felt while creating these songs will be passed along to the fans now: “I listen to music because it makes me feel good; I don’t listen to music that makes me feel bad or mournful or sad. I listen to music that just gives me shivers and makes me feel great. If we do a bit of that, then something good is happening out there in the world,” he says.
This upbeat attitude has been at the heart of The Darkness since the Hawkins brothers first began playing music together in a covers band when they were still teenagers. When that morphed into The Darkness as they began writing their own material, Hawkins says they had a very clear idea which direction they should take. “My brother and I specifically had a chat: ‘Let’s just make the music that we actually love and listen to, and always have done since we were kids.’ And so we just did that. Queen, AC/DC, ABBA, Led Zeppelin. Off we go.’”
Hawkins remembers the exact moment that he realized that The Darkness would truly be distinctive. The music had been written for what would become “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” — but, he says, “I hadn’t really heard Justin sing properly at that point — that was the first song I think he finished. He played it to me, and I was like, ‘That’s fucking amazing! That’s brilliant!’ I couldn’t believe it.”
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But he was also startled by his brother’s unconventional dramatic falsetto singing. “I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing singing all the way up there? How are you doing this?’” But that startling style would become a key trait that would ultimately set The Darkness apart from other bands.
Their fanbase quickly grew throughout the U.K., but record company executives refused to take the band seriously. “We were ignored for years because we had that upbeat, feel-good kind of thing going on, and weren’t afraid to play major chords in normal tuning when everyone [else] was in drop D [tuning], and Radiohead and Coldplay were the kings. And then there was us,” Hawkins says.
When The Darkness began selling out large theaters in London, they finally landed a recording contract. Their debut album, Permission to Land, became one of the most successful releases of 2003, landing in the charts in a half dozen countries (including earning quadruple platinum sales status in the U.K., and gold in the U.S.). The hit singles from that album, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and “Love Is Only a Feeling,” remain their signature songs.
Though the band has been through commercial and personal ups and downs since then — including going on hiatus from 2006 until 2011 — Hawkins thinks that The Darkness is now here to stay. “It’s easy being in a band with your brother if you don’t fight,” he says. “In fact, it’s probably the only reason we’re still going, I think, because there’s a family connection there that kind of gets you through a lot of the really difficult stuff that’s going on around you.”
With a grin, he adds, “I’ve always said, if we can just stick it out for a bit longer, we’ll be the last ones standing!”
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