The Darkness return to Italy: “Rock and roll as a sensation”
“Waiting for the coffee“. Write down this phrase and if you ever read it as the title of a Darkness album or song, remember this chat, because everything would start from here. It’s early in the morning when we connect on Zoom with Frankie Poullainbassist of the British band, who has just put on a mocha. The interview begins with a simple question: “Waiting for the coffee”, how are you? With his hair still disheveled, a brown Adidas tracksuit and that rock and roll irony that has always run through the history of the Darkness, Frankie replies: “When you said ‘waiting for the coffee’, you made me think that would be a great title for a song. It’s really good, so I’ll save it, if you don’t mind. Isn’t that a great title, ‘Waiting for the coffee’? It’s almost like an album title. It’s perfect. It’s a metaphor for something, but I don’t know about what. It’s a giant metaphor“. It doesn’t even seem bad to imagine him, after the latest Darkness album entitled “Dreams on Toast” (here our review), at the center of the tour that brings the band back to Italy for two live dates scheduled for 7 July 2026 at Castello Scaligero in Villafranca di Verona and 8 July 2026 in Piazza Duomo in Pistoia as part of the Pistoia Blues.
“After ‘Dreams on Toast’, the follow-up is ‘Waiting for the Coffee’,” jokes Poullain, before checking the moka pot, asking whether it’s better to leave it uncovered on the stove and finally pouring himself the coffee. “Thank you for your patience,” he says. But This is how it works with Darkness, even a technical break already becomes part of the show.
The band has just closed a long series of concerts between Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, and now looks to the European summer with the same energy as always, while the bassist tries to reconcile the return home with the restart of the tour. “I’m trying to buy and sell a property, I’m trying to do a real estate exchange, which is stressful,” says the bassist: “But I’m also doing a lot of yoga and I’m playing the Spanish guitar and then sometimes the bass. I can’t wait for the summer to come.”
For Darkness, 2026 begins on stage as a natural continuation of a movement already started, in a new phase that sees them still capable of carrying around their repertoire with a rare balance between memory, absurdity and physical presence. “We were in the middle of a world tour. So 2026 was the completion of that world tour. Australia, New Zealand and the first ever concert in Singaporewhich is crazy. Last year we went to the United States twice. I would simply like to say that I love Americans, they have huge hearts, but I think the system is obviously messed up.”
With Italy, however, Darkness have always seemed to have a special relationship. But with each audience the sensations can be different and the question is whether you notice differences in the reactions of spectators in different countries or whether the language of rock and roll is still universal. “I think when you’re really good and when it’s really just rock and roll, then people understand that it’s rock and roll“, declares Frankie:
“It’s not about understanding rock and roll, because rock and roll is a sensation. So rock and roll can manifest itself immediately. When you hit it, you feel it. And that often happens in America. American audiences somehow have that instinctive understanding, because rock and roll is a combination of African-American blues and white country. So they really understand it. But I love Italian audiences. The Italian enthusiasamo is different. It’s more theatrical. I have the feeling that Italians react to things that are theatrical and slightly strange. Italians appreciate the surreal and the comic, and this is something that I really like, mixed with the same innocence, because that combination is really fascinating, in my opinion.
The “Dreams On Toast” tour had already passed through Italy last October, when the band played indoors. “I like that Italians like it when things get a little crazy“, jokes the bassist: “Italians have an interesting sense of humor. We Brits tend to focus too much on the idea of British humor being the best and all that. But of course there are many great types of humor. In Italy, we think of Roberto Benigni. Personally I love Italian humour”. To the Italian fans, however, the band also tried to give a lesson and during one of the last Italian dates, in Milan, the Darkness also transformed “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” in a small educational gesture. The song had in fact been filmed from scratch by the group after someone in the audience had started filming, at a time when frontman Justin Hawkins asked to live the song instead without phones picked up. Recalling the moment, Poullain narrates: “Justin uses our most famous song as a moment to really send a message. He’s trying to say that this is a song that makes people happy. It has a certain euphoria that makes it special. Because I think euphoria is one of the hardest things to capture, both in music and in life. So at that moment he takes the opportunity to point out that holding the phones up isn’t worth it. Also because when we look back the recordings are never satisfactory. They are not never even remotely similar to what the real moment was. And we’re tired of, you know, watching recordings of things. They don’t really make you happy. If you go to YouTube and watch something, that’s the past. It’s already happened. So he says live in the moment.”
In this idea of absolute presence, Poullain recognizes unone of the elements that make Justin Hawkins such a particular figurenot only as a frontman but also as a bandmate: “That’s what makes Justin special as a person. I’m not trying to say he’s some kind of god or anything like that. Obviously he has his flaws. Of course he has them. But he’s an eccentric person. And I think one of the things I admire most about him is that he’s always in the moment. I wish I could do that too. But it’s hard. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s easier than we think.”
The theme of connection also returns when talking about the setlist. After more than twenty years of career, a debut that became a symbol like “Permission To Land”, a series of subsequent albums and now a new chapter like “Dreams On Toast”, choosing what to play is not just a question of promotion or balance between old and new. For Darkness, explains Poullain, the criterion is much simpler and, precisely for this reason, more difficult to circumvent. What works is what keeps the relationship with the public alive. “We don’t try to impose new songs. We try them first. And those that don’t work at the beginning of the tour we stop playing”, confesses Frankie:
“Because obviously we don’t want a situation where we lose the connection with the audience. That’s the most important thing. And of course there are some songs that we play at every concert.”
He adds: “It’s probably ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’, ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’, ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ and ‘Growing On Me’. I think those four never fail. They’re really rock and roll songs. Not so much ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’, but the other three are pure rock and roll. So it’s very difficult to put them down. And they never seem to get tired or old.”
When asked about what is your favorite song to play liveHowever, Poullain rejects the idea of a definitive answer. “Depends. It changes constantly“, says the bassist: “I can’t think of a song that always remains my favorite. I tend to prefer more acoustic stuff. I really enjoy playing songs like ‘I Love You Five Times’ sometimes when I switch to acoustic guitar. But that’s up to me, because I’m half French and I like ballads. When I contribute to the band’s songwriting, I always end up bringing strange ballads like ‘Deckchair’, ‘I Love You Five Times’ and ‘Confirmation Bias’.”
Like the past and previous Darkness works, the latest album “Dreams On Toast” seems to reaffirm a precise idea of rock and rollthat of a music that must have fun and entertain, without giving up writing, tradition and self-parody. When asked what rock should be today, Poullain disputes the very word “should”. The musician explains:
“What I don’t like is the very idea of what it should be. Why rock today shouldn’t be anything in particular. It should be spontaneous and represent a spontaneous expression of a very concentrated life force. And it shouldn’t involve thinking, because there are already too many things that involve thinking. It’s about feeling. But not just feelings. It also comes from instinct. So from the heart and the intestines, or the stomach. The Chinese know very well the importance of the intestine. The West has been a little slow to understand it. And when you start thinking about it too much, it stops being rock and roll. And somehow, if you try too hard to create it, it doesn’t really come. It just arrives. For example ‘Rock and Roll Party Cowboy’. The music came very quickly. We were just improvising and it came out right away. And I think it’s maybe the most rock and roll song on the last album. Then, in a way, we made it a kind of joke or maybe a parody, using the lyrics to make fun of rock and roll clichés.”
In the spirit of this idea of rock and roll, in the early 2000s with “Permission to Land”, The Darkness exploded into a huge realityalmost overnight. Poullain doesn’t turn the past into an edifying tale, and when asked how he observes that trajectory today, he replies: “I actually never look at the past. I don’t think reflecting is particularly useful. I think it’s better to move forward. When you reflect on the past, it’s all too crazy. And there are also bad moments. When you think about the lawyers and the people, the former managers who took advantage of the situation and made terrible mistakes. And I don’t want to become bitter.” He continues: “When you look back on everything, if you focus on the magical moments and the beautiful moments we had together as a band and as musicians, then it’s beautiful. But throughout history there have been many people who have tried to take advantage. Every musician who has been working in this industry for twenty years has stories like this. Why musicians are the easiest people to exploit. And that’s why I don’t really like to reflect on the past. Or if I do, maybe I think about some concerts.”
Yet those moments from the past continue to have effects. The Darkness today don’t just play for those who discovered them in 2003, when “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” seemed to come from another time and at the same time speak perfectly to their own. At each round of concerts Frakie explains about notice new peoplenot necessarily very young, but curious enough to follow word of mouth and discover a band that, behind the irony, the onesies, the falsettos and the riffs, preserves a very serious idea of lightness. “I constantly notice new people at concerts,” emphasizes the musician: “It must be like this, because it can’t always be the same ones who come back. And in some places the audience is even growing.” He adds: “Many people come by word of mouth. That’s how it works. Those who have already seen us two or three times talk about us to others.”
