THE Darkness still want to be relevant and recognized. They just don’t want you to know that’s what they want.

And so the fifth album from the Suffolk glam-rockers throws in the dumbest and quickest AC/DC riffs and the biggest helping of juvenile smut they feel they can get away with, aims to be a ‘serious’ record in novelty trousers, and hopes not to be judged too harshly as a result.

Unfortunately, harsh judgment is pretty inevitable when an album of just ten tracks contains as much filler as this one does. Justin Hawkins’ lyrics have forsaken any sense of nuance (inasmuch as they ever did) and head straight for the comedy ditch, to particularly mean effect on closing track Stampede Of Love.

The Darkness can make as unholy a racket as they like (and, particularly on All The Pretty Girls and Buccaneers of Hispaniola, they do) and try to demonstrate fragility and self-awareness (I Wish I Was In Heaven), but Pinewood Smile is an album that exists solely for the sake of The Darkness making an album. It lets us know they’re still around. On this evidence, they shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.