The Datsuns' debut album a real cherry

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

The Datsuns

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Label: Shock


How can we not like the Datsuns?

They've done it their way, gone from provincial obscurity on the wrong side of the world to the cover of the NME, and they've got so big so fast that TVNZ had to go out and buy Mike Hosking a leather jacket just to interview them.

Yes there are rock'n'roll bands just as good live from these parts - well fellow travellers the D4, at least - but the Datsuns have been the great story of the year so far in Kiwi music. In Australia they're asking the same question of their out-of-nowhere Up Over success of the Vines: Why them?

Well, they've got to where they are today by being a crash hot live band. Fortunately, their debut album manages to bottle enough of that berserk stage energy, while indicating that although they are worryingly fluent in the ancient dialect of 70s rawk, their highly developed sense of irony never gets in the way of the energy or a sense of goofy fun.

The Datsuns is 39 minutes 21 seconds of unrestrained rock'n'roll glee. You get the dotty howlings of singer Dolf de Datsun, the grunting riffs and wiggly solos of twin-geetar attack, and rhythms which go from caveman boogie all the way to glam swagger.

Yes, it can induce flashbacks - especially if one of the first albums you ever bought was Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan, or if you have a passing acquaintance with early AC/DC, Deep Purple (witness the organ-decorated At Your Touch and the single In Love) or Iggy and the Stooges.

Occasionally you might wonder if the young quartet stood too close to the front when Head Like a Hole were doing their bit for bogan rock nouveau last decade - especially on the likes of MF From Hell and the closing Freeze Sucker.

But add the strangely groovy and poppy Harmonic Generator, and the demented You Build Me Up and it shows that this isn't another band just performing a well-timed rock'n'roll rewiring job.

No, The Datsuns is genuinely inspired nonsense.

That's quite enough rawk for one week so to a quick prescription of guitar-free chill-pills ... top of the pile is Nightmares on Wax's Mind Elevation (* * * * Label: Warp), the fourth album following the slow but jovial Carboot Soul and Smoker's Delight from producer George Evelyn. It also manages to run a fine line between downbeat and jaunty on its loungey, reggaefied instrumentals while throwing in some hearty voice work-outs, at best on the likes of the Britsoul Date with Destiny and 70s 80s a gently understated rap ode to growing up in the days of Two-Tone and Margaret Thatcher.

Pursuit of Happiness (* * * Label: Multiply) is the first album by Weekend Players, a side project of Andy Cato - the lanky trombone-playing half of Groove Armada - and singer Rachel Foster. The album doesn't stray far from the Cato's other band when they are in shiny house mode, while Foster's voice has a jazzy, slightly aloof quality which is nice enough. But as this drifts past it can make you think: so that's what a Sade LP sounds like at 45 rpm. And whatever did happen to Everything But the Girl?

Thievery Corporation are the American studio partnership of Eric Hilton and Rob Garza who on The Richest Man in Babylon (* * Label: Shock) are again trying to evoke something classy, cinematic and terribly jet-setting with their combo of exotic beats and voices.

Most of it sounds acceptably multicultural and electronic enough to be that atmospheric soundbed to a CNN promo. The Jah-invoking The Outernationalist sounds like a dubby rumble that many have done before - and better.

Still, the brassy jazz-soul of All That We Perceive (with vocals by Pam Bricker) and the samba Meu Destno break it out of its background muzak cum travelogue mood. But you deserve frequent flier miles for making it through all 15 tracks in one sitting.