As I mentioned in the One Way Ticket review, Hawkins quit the band to cope with his drug addiction (although he also did it out of a dislike of the schedule the band was now having to live under, which seems a bit drastic considering it was only the band's second album at the time!). He had already had an attempt at the start of a solo career while he was still in The Darkness under the name British Whale and released two singles, a cover of "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Two Of Us" by Sparks and an unofficial World Cup anthem called "England" (this would be the 2006 World Cup, which is when I was 13...wow, I wonder if this is what it feels like to be old!), but that wasn't his only work before he founded Hot Leg: he sung backing vocals for Def Leppard's cover of "Hell Raiser" by Sweet (which appeared on Def Leppard's covers album Yeah!), he was part of an unsuccessful bid to represent the UK in the 2007 Eurovision song contest with the song "They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To" (which he sung as a duet with Beverlei Brown), he appeared on Top Gear to sing Billy Ocean's "Red Light Spells Danger" alongside the Top Gear presenters for a Comic Relief episode of the show and then started a Myspace profile containing songs for what was intended to be his solo album, but which would later become Hot Leg's album Red Light Fever. I'll admit, I'm skipping over a couple of things he did before the album was released, but most of it isn't really important, although you might be interested to hear that he did produce both this album and We're The Good Guys by the band Saving Aimee (even making a guest appearance on a song on that album) in 2009, so it's fair to say that the guy was busy up until The Darkness reunited!
Anyway, I've talked your ear off enough about Justin Hawkins' solo work, let's dig into this album! It charted at number 81 on the UK albums chart, so, from a popularity perspective, Stone Gods proved to be more popular than Justin Hawkins on his own did, and also gained worse reviews than Stone Gods did. But does that mean this is necessarily a worse album than Silver Spoons & Broken Bones? Well, let's find out!
Before we really start with the music, let's take a look at the cover art. And...oh, dear God, Hawkins wasn't serious with this cover art, was he? I...I have no words, I really don't! I just don't like this much and I can't quite find the words to say why!
Ugh...can we move on, I don't want to look at the cover art any longer than I have to!
We can? Thanks.
Red Light Fever bears a sound that is understandably very similar to what The Darkness were doing on their first two albums. It honestly sounds like a blend of their first two albums, with the somewhat grandiose sound of One Way Ticket being nicely balanced by the tough roots sound of Permission To Land. Don't get me wrong, there isn't any of the rather unusual instrument choices like there was on One Way Ticket and the AC/DC riffing isn't quite as noticeable on here as it was on Permission To Land: about the only real addition to the band's sound from that of The Darkness is the keyboards, and even they don't do a lot. In that aspect, it's a closer follow up to One Way Ticket than Silver Spoons & Broken Bones is: rather than rejecting the extravagance of One Way Ticket in favour of a return to hard rock roots like Stone Gods did, Hot Leg took that sound, dialled it back to a more manageable level and arguably gave it enough tidying up to make you realise just how far over the top The Darkness went on One Way Ticket. This isn't the sound of a band who are trying too much and losing sight of the sound they were going for like The Darkness did on One Way Ticket, this is the sound of a band who knew what they were aiming to do and just did it. The fact that most of the songs on the album are actually very enjoyable could well be used to highlight that point: about the only song I'd say doesn't really work is "Trojan Guitar", which wears itself out so quickly that you probably would be forgiven for wanting to reach for the skip button before it's finished.
The lyrics are generally pretty poor (although they don't descend to being quite as bad as on "Bald"), which kind of indicates to me that Justin Hawkins is the guy behind at least some of the lyrics from The Darkness' previous albums which I found to be in need of some work. That said, Hawkins is definitely on top form vocally and on the guitar here: some of the notes he hits in "Chickens" (which is, I'll be honest, one of the dumbest songs I've ever heard that was meant to be taken seriously, but I can't hate it either!) are ridiculously high and his guitar playing is just as good as it was on The Darkness' last album. The other members don't sound too different from the other guys in The Darkness on their respective instruments, which either is a sign of how good the other guys are on their instruments or how ultimately replaceable the guys in The Darkness would turn out to be if Hawkins had opted to (or been able to, if that was an option available to him) continue under the name of The Darkness. There's a guest appearance on "Ashamed" by Beverlei Brown (who should ring a bell: I mentioned her earlier), who vocally sounds like she is a female version of Justin Hawkins. Not sure whether that was a deliberate choice or not, but it'd be really interesting to hear her in a band of her own, as she doesn't seem to have done a lot, to my knowledge.
The production is still a bit on the loud side and the bass is still a bit too quiet for my liking, but it's better than One Way Ticket was. I would say that Stone Gods did a better job overall on the production front, but this isn't especially bad.
So, final thoughts? If you liked The Darkness' first album and thought their second album, while still enjoyable, was a bit overblown, this should be right up your alley! It dials back on a lot of the issues from One Way Ticket and finds a nice middle point between it and Permission To Land.
Final Rating: 7 Out Of 10
A very enjoyable album that is well composed, but suffers from generally poor lyrics, being slightly too loudly mastered and probably having a bit too much of Hawkins overdoing his higher range at points. Fans of The Darkness should go search this out and it's certainly worth a listen if you like the idea of Queen meets AC/DC. You might not love this album, but it'll still probably spend more than a bit of time in your CD player! If you didn't like The Darkness, well, you know the drill by now...
Personal Favourite Songs: "Chickens", "Ashamed"
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