Sounds From The Junkshop #101 - The Datsuns

 

"I see your letters, they're written with spit/You're taking care of business but baby, you flipped" - The Datsuns - Fink For The Man

It's that old favourite ain't it? You go and see a band live and they absolutely blast you into the middle of next week and you're convinced they're gonna be the future of rock 'n' roll. Excitedly you rush out to get the album as soon as you're able...only to be massively disappointed because the klutz behind the production desk has completely ruined it.

It's happened to me more than once down the years I'll grant you but the Datsuns are one of those cases that really stand out in my mind. I first ran into them at the Leeds Festival in 2003 when they played the Second Stage and were one of the standout bands of the day - a real fuzzed-up wrecking ball of garage rock snotty attitude with tunes like Motherfucker From Hell, Harmonic Generator and In Love (which they had Marcie and Carrie from my other favourites of the time the Von Bondies doing guest vocals on - the VB's had been on just before the Datsuns on the day) absolutely igniting the place. By this stage, garage rock was very much on the wane commercially but I was convinced I'd seen the future.

...and then I went out and bought the album and realised they'd already blown it. The Datsuns hailed from New Zealand and along with the likes of the Vines and Jet (more of whom in a future SFTJ I'm sure), they spearheaded the Antipodean arm of the garage rock revival. As I've mentioned they were a cracking live band but I've no idea what happened with their album - I was quick to put my name forward to review it when it landed on the review desk at the 'zine I worked for at the time (this would've been either Leeds Music Scene or Sandman, I can't quite remember which) only to be decidedly underwhelmed when I stuck it on.

I'm not sure who was in charge of producing this thing but they needed their ears boxing for sure. The whole thing was swamped in echoey mud and the tunes that had swaggered through so effortlessly in the live arena ended up fatally blunted. In Love went from being a storming crowd singalong to sounding like a second division Deep Purple (those keyboards - WHY?!), Harmonic Generator which had absolutely slaughtered at the festival that day went to sounding like something that didn't make the cut for the ill-fated second Elastica album and the rest was just eminently forgettable with only the frenetic closer Fink For The Man coming anywhere even close to capturing the lightning in the bottle that was the band's live sound.

I still went to see the band live again at Leeds Cockpit towards the end of that year and they turned in another cracking live set which made the production balls-up on the album all the more frustrating - it was a tantalising glimpse of what might have been if someone less cloth-eared had been put in charge of that thing. So I still had hope that they might yet turn it around...but unfortunately when their second album Outta Sight Outta Mind surfaced the following year it somehow contrived to be even worse - this one didn't even have the tunes buried beneath the mud. The group had roped in John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin to produce it and I think they might have got a bit carried away as it turned out to be a joyless overly-reverential attempt at cloning the '70s rock sound without any real original ideas of their own. Basically think Greta Van Fleet's dads - yuck. Unsurprisingly the reviews were lukewarm, the album tanked and the band disappeared off my radar soon afterwards.

The Datsuns would grimly hang on for the next decade or so and put out another two or three albums (I did end up reviewing their Deep Sleep album in 2014. Let's just say that it wasn't the return to form we were hoping for and leave it there) but the law of diminishing returns would eventually see them wind the operation up and sink into inactivity. That, by rights, should have been that, another case of an initially promising garage rock revival band who never quite realised their early potential.

But wait - this one does have a happy ending for a change. Following the group's split, lead singer Dolf would end up linking up with Nicke Andersson from the Hellacopters to form the absolute barnstormer of a band that was Imperial State Electric which took the garage rock template and twisted it into all sorts of exciting new forms - their All Through The Night and Honk Machine albums are pretty much essential listening. After that went on hiatus with Nicke going back to the Hellacopters, Dolf reconvened the Datsuns and their comeback album Eye To Eye last year was a genuinely triumphant return, the sort of album you wished they'd managed to make 15-odd years previously with a lean mean garage rock feel which was a total contrast to the flabby sound of their debut. Hopefully their future albums will keep up this good run of form. Yup, I probably wouldn't recommend any of the Datsuns' noughties output (look up some live performances from the time on Youtube for a better indicator of what they could do at their best) but Eye To Eye is at the very least deserving of a curiosity listen and hopefully there'll be some similarly high quality output incoming in times ahead to go with it.