"Rock and Roll Party Cowboy" Released: 24 January 2025
"Walking Through Fire" Released: 24 February 2025
"The Battle for Gadget Land" Released: 10 March 2025
"Hot on My Tail" Released: 24 March 2025
Dreams on Toast is the eighth studio album by the British hard rock band the Darkness, released on 28 March 2025 on Canary Dwarf and Cooking Vinyl.[1] Produced by guitarist Dan Hawkins, the album was preceded by the singles, "The Longest Kiss", "I Hate Myself", "Rock and Roll Party Cowboy", "Walking Through Fire", "The Battle for Gadget Land" and "Hot on My Tail".
The album's opening track, "Rock and Roll Party Cowboy", is a satire on rock and roll cliches, with frontman Justin Hawkins noting, "It's got that gay undercurrent. Rock can be so straight and misogynistic, it drives me mad. I wanted to subvert those tropes."[2] The album's fourth track, "Mortal Dread", addresses the passage of time and changing cultural values: "The world's changing. The perceptions of what's toxic, the things you were taught to be when you were younger are now unacceptable, you're losing your raison d'être. You get to my age and you go, 'If I'm not a man, what am I?'"[2]
The album's penultimate track, "Walking Through Fire", directly addresses the band's current position within the music industry, with Justin Hawkins noting, "I think ambition is a little bit ugly. When you lay stuff bare like that and you talk about the experience of doing things, that’s nearly as interesting as the music itself. If anyone is inclined to pay attention to the lyrics, they’re getting an experience of what this existence looks like and feels like."[2]
During the writing process, the band wrote roughly 150 songs in contention for the album.[2]
Release
On 18 September 2024, the band announced they were set to release the new album Dreams on Toast in March. The album was released on 28 March 2025. Along with the announcement, the band announced an extensive list of UK tour dates which took place from 6 March to 1 April 2025, in support of the release of the album.[3] Additional dates were added to play songs from the album for the first time[4][5] alongside dates in Ireland.[6]
Six singles were released: "The Longest Kiss",[7] "I Hate Myself",[8] "Rock and Roll Party Cowboy",[9] "Walking Through Fire",[10] "The Battle for Gadget Land"[11] and "Hot on My Tail".[12]
The album received generally favourable reviews by critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album earned an average score of 68, based on 9 reviews.[13]
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