Down and dirty with D4

It's Saturday night at the Auckland Supertop and the crowd is rarking itself up for a few solid hours of rock'n'roll. Backstage, D4 drummer Beaver (Daniel Pooley) is folding the sweat-towels. "My wife showed me how to do it like this," he says, showing off his bathroom origami skills.

The band are about to play the Auckland half of two support gigs for American supergroup Velvet Revolver. So far, their warm-up routine is more Martha Stewart than Motley Crue.

"Cock rock," Beaver bellows to no one in particular, then folds another towel. Geez, when does the yoga start?"

There's a Twister mat in here somewhere," he quips. "I should freak Velvet Revolver out - walk into their caravan with Twister under my arm and some yoghurt, like, 'What's up guys? Wanna play?"'

His plan will never pan out, of course. When the D4's power duo, singer-guitarists Jimmy Christmas and Dion Palmer, enter the room it's strictly business. The D4 have a new album to promote, and although it's called Out of My Head the band can't afford to take the title literally - even though Palmer says that if he's tired before a show, "I'll throw myself against a wall backstage or punch myself in the face to wake up."

Beaver straps a piece of leather to his leg and starts hitting it with gargantuan drumsticks so that by the time he gets the real ones in his hands they'll feel light as a feather. Christmas and Palmer start jamming with their guitars unplugged, their eyes pinched shut in concentration. Bass player Vaughan Williams tips the contents of his hip-flask into a Red Bull. If the band are nervous, they don't show it.

This isn't the first time the D4 have played a stadium-sized gig. Since their debut album 6Twenty came out four years ago they've lived mainly on the road, playing major international festivals - Big Day Out, Glastonbury, PukkelPop, Reading, Leeds, Fuji Rock, Homebake among them - and countless club shows with veteran bands such as Fu Manchu and Radio Birdman, and "It" bands the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Datsuns. Along the way they've made a name for their dangerous live sets and acquired, says Christmas, "lots of bruises, lots of cuts, no broken bones yet, touch wood".

"If you want to be a hot band, you've got to tour your ass off," says Palmer. "You need to tour for two months non-stop with two days off and then you can become a hot band."

Swedish rock stars the Hives certainly think so - they've just invited the D4 on a high-profile European tour. After that the Kiwis will tour Australia and New Zealand to push Out of My Head. And with two hot singles, Sake Bomb and What I Want on the air, the D4 look set to become New Zealand's great white hope.

Still, the time lapse between the D4's two albums isn't what you'd call conducive to being a hot band. It's four years since the D4 released 6Twenty on Flying Nun (New Zealand), Festival Mushroom (Australia), Hollywood Records (US), Sony Music (Japan) and Warners (Europe). The album sold more than 20,000 in the US, 15,000 in Japan and 6000 here, and launched them as New Zealand's ultimate rock'n'roll good-timers. But since then, the garage rock revival that gave them a crucial leg-up has waned and buzz bands such as the Vines and the Datsuns have released lacklustre, samey albums.

The D4 say they weren't immune to the pressures of the sophomore slump.

"I did feel it a little bit," says Christmas. "A lot of bands make a really great first record and the second doesn't live up to expectations."

Palmer: "I say, listen to our second record and you'll know why [it took so long]. We worked our asses off. We really put our all into everything we have. We took the time to make sure it was better than our first record."

Much of the credit they give to their manager, Alan McGee (the man who discovered Oasis), and producer pair the Dirty Geezers who helped them record the album.

If taking time out for songwriting was the key, it explains why they shipped themselves off to a hovel of a flat in South London."

No disrespect to our partners, but our lives in New Zealand were too comfortable for us to make the record we were trying to make," says Christmas. "Because we've got so much of our lives here - family, friends - we weren't always available to write the record as we should have been. We were trying to operate between certain hours. For us, writing doesn't happen that way. It might be two o'clock in the morning when you get the inspiration for a song. We needed to be isolated and with the band."

By putting ourselves in an environment in South London we were uncomfortable, we were in each other's faces, and we were totally immersed in what we were doing. Our whole existence was making this record. Also, the fact we were away from home and we were feeling the pressure about making this record, it added an edge to the record."

The decision to commit to a songwriting stint overseas also kick-started a chain of events that would inspire the album's darker, more introspective material.

"Things went horribly wrong on the plane," says Palmer. "Some members of the band decided to get a little bit out of it. We got through that and then we arrived and tried to find accommodation in a hurry. We ended up in a hostel first, sharing with some European people we didn't know."

Christmas: "Vaughn was freaking out. There was some guy's shoes in the room and he couldn't breathe. He had to put them out on the windowsill."

Palmer: "We said, 'Nah, we're not staying here. We're not spending six weeks staying in this shit-hole living with people we don't know'."

Christmas: "So we moved to a shit-hole living with people we do know. Ourselves."

Aside from Sake Bomb and a couple of other tracks dedicated to the consequences of hard partying, they set to work ridding the place of rats and writing songs inspired by untrustworthy people, isolation, the emotional turmoil that comes with being so far from loved ones.

Thankfully, the women in their lives are understanding about their lifestyle, say the band. Tonight, amid complaints that their flats are starting to look like makeshift recording studios, they're here to support their men.

"We're really appreciative of that because it's not a lot to offer a girl," says Christmas. "Hey, wanna go out with me? I'll be away most of the time. I'll be back but I'll be pretty sleepy."

Palmer: "And if you ring me when I'm overseas I'll probably be drunk."

Musically, the album is a meatier effort than the simple, punky spirit of 70s-inspired 6Twenty, songs likeGet Loose, Party and Saturday Night.

That down-and-dirty rock'n'roll feel is still there but tracks such as What I Want, Trust Nobody and Too Stupid show off an edgier, meaner and more worldly outlook: "Don't put your trust in nobody, you can't trust nobody but yourself."

The most notable example of their about-turn is Stops Me Cold, a slow, bluesy and gloriously depressing track the band proudly recorded themselves in Auckland. It gave them a chance to experiment, propping the mic just outside the studio door and recording the vocals in the toilet to give it a spacious, eerie feel. Palmer didn't even bother to tune his guitar for the solo.

"When we first wrote it, it was a love song and we demoed it and it was a lot faster. We recorded it on a cassette that was faulty so when we played it back it slowed it right down and all the lyrics were nasty and creepy. So we changed the lyrics to suit and we slowed the whole thing down and when we recorded it we got this magic take."

"We can't just write songs about partying and girls forever," adds Palmer. "We'll always be a good fun band, but to keep ourselves interested we've got to keep moving on and writing about different things."

The D4 are about to find out if Auckland agrees. And, for that matter, what Velvet Revolver think of them.

It's a tough crowd, but as the band launch into the final few chords, Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum sidles on stage and tips his bottle of Corona over Beaver's head. It's the ultimate sign of respect.

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WHO: The D4

LINE-UP: Jimmy Christmas (vocals, guitar), Dion Palmer (vocals, guitar), Vaughan Williams (bass), Beaver Pooley (drums).

COVERS: On debut album 6Twenty (2001), the D4 covered Pirate Love by Johnny Thunders, Invader Ace by Guitar Wolf and Mysterex by the Scavengers. On Out of My Head (2005) they cover Out of Control by Lime Spiders and Savage by the Fun Things. By co-incidence, both are Aussie bands.

TRIVIA: How to drink a sake bomb (as in the first single): drop a ceramic cup of hot sake into a very cold glass of beer then chug it back. According to Palmer, "It can change your whole night."