And with this track right here, the end of The Darkness appearing on this blog is marked. We had a good run. There’s a small chance you’d have realised that all the songs by the band I’ve given my thoughts about are all from their 2003 debut album Permission to Land. That’s because I, at least, still have an amazing time listening through it. Plus, I’ve had it since I was eight or nine and the sentimental value’s very high. I’ve said in passing that The Darkness got me into rock music, and it’s the truth. That whole Permission to Land era… Songs like ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’, ‘Love Is Only a Feeling’, ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)’. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably be casually listening to the UK Top 40. So thank God for The Darkness, honestly.

‘Stuck in a Rut’ is the seventh song on Permission to Land, starting on-beat straight after the song before it finishes. I have a good memory of listening to this one on my Playstation 2 a long, long time ago. Years later, I returned to it and found that the melody of the chorus had never left my head. The track is about a burning desire to get in a car of any kind and leave your hometown without looking back. Three of the original members of the band are from Lowestoft, a coastal town in the Southeast of England. I’ve never been there myself, but as Justin Hawkins refers to it as a ‘shithole’ and a ‘sty’, the negative reception doesn’t provide an incentive to go and visit. “Oh, kiss my arse, kiss my arse goodbye” is still a hilarious opening line to me, even though it’s meant in all seriousness. Hawkins uses the American pronunciation of “aluminium” in it too, which confused me when I was younger, but I can understand now because of the syllable numbers. And like all the other songs on the LP, he delivers his vocals with that trademark falsetto and high pitch that you could only imitate and never replicate.

Something I’ve noticed about this song is how much rawer in terms of production it sounds in comparison to the rest of the songs on Permission… While tracks like ‘Growing on Me’ or ‘Friday Night’ have these “big”, layered guitar elements to them. ‘…Rut’, on the other hand, sounds like it was a one-take performance captured live in the studio. The mix overall sounds a lot more closed in than usual, almost as if they’re playing in a small room. If that’s the case, I think it makes the track all that more impressive, especially when considering Hawkins’s vocal performance. Of course, there’s the high pitches and everything. But then there’s the insanity he captures in that adlibbed bridge where he begs his master to kill him, and the last “Yeah” in the song that faultlessly breaks into a whistle tone. It’s awesome, awesome stuff. A deep cut that’s always worth a listen. To me. But it could be to you as well.