She … loves to cook, sew and dance. She's up on all the latest steps like the frug, the hully-gully and the surf.

All of her strivings and all of her little lectures and admonitions would add up to a U.S. in which all were equal. . . . She was until the day of her death the most effective advocate of welfare-state equalitarianism.

When the album succeeds, such as on the swaggering, Queen-esque “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us,” it does so on The Darkness’ own terms—that is, as a random ’80s-cliché generator. But with so many tired, lazy callbacks to its own threadbare catalog (including “Love Is Not The Answer,” a watery echo of the epic “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” from 2003’s Permission To Land), Hot Cakes marks the point where The Darkness has stopped cannibalizing the golden age of stadium rock and simply started cannibalizing itself. And, despite Hawkins’ inveterate crotch-grabbing, there was never that much meat there to begin with.

Bloody nonsense, All come together... Sounds like the motto of a knocking shop in Marrakesh.