The Darkness: The Guildhall, Portsmouth

The Darkness | Ash
The Guildhall, Portsmouth
25th March 2025

The Darkness are a band that have had their share of ups and downs. Right now, they’re firmly on an upward trajectory. Simon Reed dons the crampons and heads into the rarefied air of Portsmouth Guildhall to check them out.

The Darkness always were a group that divided opinion. Justin Hawkins’s falsetto vocals could shatter window panes and not everybody likes that in a rock band; see also: Rush. To this reviewer, their quirky nature and seemingly instantaneous rise to fame had all the hallmarks of the sort of manufactured group the likes of Simon Cowell would put together. It was primarily for this reason that I absolutely hated them.

Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. For a start, people like Cowell don’t actually do niche products; preferring instead a bland, median output designed to appeal to the widest possible demographic. Secondly, their ‘seemingly instantaneous rise to fame’ was in fact anything but. The Darkness had done their fair share of playing to empty rooms before anyone noticed them and record industry moguls saw them as a risk specifically because they were perceived as something of a joke. Finally, manufactured groups tend to be disparate bodies thrown together to fit a collective mould. The Darkness had a pair of siblings, which brought an entirely different dynamic; see also: Oasis.

What happened once they had been noticed is well documented. In short: the debut album Permission To Land and its lead single I Believe In A Thing Called Love were colossal sellers in 2003, leading to instantaneous worldwide fame and a string of awards. The adulation messed with Justin Hawkins’s head, leading to some extremely hedonistic behaviour, a spell in rehab and three years later, his exit from the band. The Darkness were then promptly dropped by Atlantic Records; proving, if proof were needed, that the music business is a music business, and in three short years, The Darkness were done.

The rags/riches/rags timeline led to recriminations between the brothers, which resulted in Justin and Dan not speaking for two years. But all good stories have a road to redemption arc and this one is no different. Justin has been clean for years. The sibling relationship has been restored. The band reformed in 2011 and since 2015 with the arrival of Rufus (son of Roger) Taylor on drums, they have gone from strength to strength. On 28th March, their eighth studio album, Dreams On Toast, is released. It stands a good chance of being their first number-one album since Permission To Land, 22 years ago.

The band and their members have not been without further tribulations either. In 2002, when opening for Chicago metalheads Disturbed, The Darkness were pelted with shoes, bottles and coins – and bizarrely a piece of used chewing gum that landed in Justin’s mouth. In 2007, Dan Hawkins was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The offending item was removed and he is happily in remission. In 2017, Justin discovered a polyp on one of his vocal chords. In order to continue to sing, he had to have it removed. It was an action that could have ended his career. Fortunately, it didn’t.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a road to redemption arc too. I now finally get The Darkness and I’ve gone from loathing the band to absolutely loving them. This is partly due to having photographed them a few times. Few bands afford such great photo opportunities at every gig. My change of heart also stems from a subscription to Justin’s YouTube channel: Justin Hawkins Rides Again, which is excellent in every conceivable way and highly recommended viewing. If you don’t like his honesty and brilliant sense of humour then there might possibly be something wrong with you.

So it’s with delight that I catch up with the band again on the 13th night of the Dreams On Toast tour at Portsmouth’s historic Guildhall. It’s a strange place. Constructed in 1890 with a façade dominated by stunning Corinthian order columns, it was largely destroyed in 1941 when the Luftwaffe kindly dropped a load of incendiary bombs into its innards. Miraculously, the majority of the exterior survived and it still looks amazing to this day. The internals were rebuilt in the 1950s with the typical modernist architecture of the time. Accordingly, the outside radiates the populism of Jeremy Corbyn and the inside is less inspiring than Keir Starmer.

Fortunately, the audience have something to take their mind off the environs. They’re being beautifully warmed up by Northern Ireland’s Ash, a band with an even longer timeline than The Darkness. It’s a sell-out and the room is already extremely full when they start. I wouldn’t quite call this a double headline show, but it’s in the ballpark and the crowd here certainly seem to approve of a similar vintage artist kicking things off.

The Gibson pointy guitar division did very well out of Ash. Frontman Tim Wheeler rocks a Flying V, whilst stage left, bassist Mark Hamilton and his Thunderbird collectively have more shapes than a mathematics textbook. Continuing the educational theme, drummer Rick McMurray could pass for a geography teacher these days, but that doesn’t matter because he keeps a rocking time and hits those skins hard. Really hard.

In fact, in here Ash appear far more metallic than the indie pop-rock you find on their records. Classic songs you expect to hear like Shining Light, Girl From Mars and Burn Baby Burn sound like they’re being covered by Black Sabbath. A classic song you don’t expect to hear is Jump In The Line by Harry Belafonte, but it gets the same treatment: loud and played at around 2000 miles per hour. It turns out to be their next single release.

As it has for years, ABBA’s Arrival heralds The Darkness on stage. They start with Rock And Roll Party Cowboy, the first track from Dreams On Toast. It’s got classic Darkness humour; a list of deliberately tongue-in-cheek rock music clichés before the chorus: “I’m a rock and roll party cowboy, and I ain’t gonna read no Tolstoy!”. You have to love it.

Justin has eschewed his typical Lycra catsuit in favour of a cravat, sleeveless shirt, waistcoat and jeans. The clothing has changed but some things remain resolutely the same. Growing On Me and Get Your Hands Off My Woman follows. They’re both tracks from Permission To Land and they both feature the falsetto singing style that was prevalent on much of The Darkness material of the time. Hawkins isn’t the only one doing the singing. The crowd love these old tunes and he gets the words blasted back to him with interest, if not the same vocal range.

So the falsetto has remained and likewise so has Justin’s amazing rapport with the audience. In fact, there are so many stoppages between (and occasionally during) songs that sometimes you begin to question whether you’re at a regular gig or a rock musical. There are also some nice set pieces to keep us photographers happy. Before I leave the photo pit, Justin has kept time clapping his feet whilst doing a headstand and delivered a jump from the drum riser that could have seen him bringing ice crystals down in his hair.

It’s not all scripted mayhem though and there’s plenty of time for improvisation. Part way through one of his many chats with the audience, he notices a placard being held aloft in the crowd and he requests that it be brought forward. It reads: “Let me play bass on I Believe In A Thing Called Love”. He ponders it for a second: “No. Fuck off. We’ve got a bass player. Get in your own band!”

As you might expect, the setlist heavily features music from each end of the Darkness timeline, with songs from Permission To Land and Dreams On Toast getting the most exposure. At the time of the gig, the latter is still to be released so the material is far less familiar but Justin helps out the audience to ensure it’s still a fully immersive experience. There’s a dance move to learn for Walking Through Fire (an excellent tune with comedic self-deprecating lyrics). It’s not hard: marching on the spot facing right, then left with a 180° turn every four bars. I’m on the balcony and watching the entirety of the floor doing it is hilarious. Before The Longest Kiss (another new one), Justin instructs the crowd on how he expects them to react when he takes the guitar solo. We even get a few practice goes before they play it.

Ironically, the classic older stuff that ought to be a fully immersive experience is less so because whenever a recognisable riff fires up, a sizeable minority of the audience all pop their phones in the air and choose to view the gig through the back of a six-inch screen rather than their eyes. This always pisses me off and I’m not the only one.

Around thirty seconds into Love Is Only A Feeling, Justin stops the band, points to an offender around six rows back, and demands their phone. What follows is the best put-down of a gig through mobile offender I’ve ever seen. “Do you know what you look like?” (does a mocking mime of a person glued to a phone). “Maybe I should do the whole song like this” (mimes playing guitar one-handed whilst holding a phone to face). “No, I’ve got a better idea. “I’ll take a photograph of my penis” (shoves phone down the front of his trousers). “Now I’ll take a photograph of my bottom” (shoves phone down the back of his trousers). “I suggest you sanitise that and then put it in your fucking pocket” (throws the phone back to the offender).

There’s one more surprise before we get to the end of the show. For My Only, Rufus Taylor comes down from the drum podium to sing the lead vocal. I’m suddenly reminded of the sort of thing Taylor Hawkins used to do with the Foo Fighters. The Darkness don’t have one of the best rock and roll drummers on the planet already out front who can trade places, so they call on the services of Scott, the drum tech. I’m not familiar with the song, but it’s accompanied by photos of Rufus and his dog on the big screens, so assume it’s about that.

The final song of the main set is, as one might expect, I Believe In A Thing Called Love. Justin delivers a sizeable monologue intro to it, and then the band play the first thirty seconds of… Led Zep’s The Immigrant Song. I suspect this was at least partly to get the inevitable mobile phone offenders to start videoing the wrong thing.

There’s a longer than usual wait for the encore, whilst another mic is set up at the front of the stage. Something is clearly afoot. When the band return, Justin has had a costume change: a new shirt, jacket and tie plus slicked-back hair and glasses. They play Weekend In Rome, another tongue-in-cheek song from the new album. The extra mic is for Rufus, who is back out front delivering sweet harmony vocals and a “dramatic monologue” (Justin’s words) that occurs part way through. It’s an acoustic song, so Scott remains in the wings this time. At the end, Justin is showered with fake roses thrown by some planted swooning ladies parked in the photo pit.

The band finish with I Hate Myself, also from Dreams On Toast. It’s a proper party rock tune and the audience are united in having a proper dance to it. At the close, we all file out and broad grins are all around. It’s hard to believe having just watched such a great show that only a few years ago, The Darkness had gone from mega-stardom to playing obscure rooms in obscure places to a handful of people. On 29th March, they play Wembley Arena and it’s practically a sell-out. Never has redemption felt so good.

~

You can find The Darkness on their website and on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

The Ash website is here. You can also find the band on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X.

All words and photographs by Simon Reed. His website Musical Pictures is here and you can visit his author profile for Louder Than War here. He tweets as @musicalpix and is on Instagram at musicalpictures.co.uk