Picture this. An upstart band from a historically non-descript rock n' roll breeding ground gets turned loose touring a club scene thousands of miles away from home with nothing more than a handful of singles to their name. No album. No label support to write home about. No promises of success. With gigs lined up in a handful of U.S. cities followed by a short tour of the U.K., the band finds itself being asked to perform live for a John Peel BBC session show and quickly turns the momentum from that performance into billings on the upcoming Reading and Leeds Festivals.......
True story. The year was 2002. The band? Cambridge, New Zealand's very own garage rock golden boys, The Datsuns.
And only then did the month of August roll around providing the world with the band's first full-length album, inconspicuously titled The Datsuns.
Seems like a fairy tale story in the era of the major-label homogenizing of rock n' roll. Major-label focus group subjugation? Ha ha. Let's not kid ourselves, as that would only spoil the story. These guys tested themselves the old-fashioned way, by taking their product straight to the people, by gigging relentlessly around the globe until sold-out shows became the norm.
So have these guys reinvented rock n' roll with a new sound? Hardly. If the fact that The Datsuns are part of the current onslaught of garage-rock bands seems too trendy, never mind -- because they have become the white-hot buzz of the underground scene with a good old-fashioned grassroots approach that actually seem to defy all trends.
Some critics would say that these New Zealanders begged, borrowed, and stole their way to amassing the 10-song collection of tracks on their self titled debut. Sure they "borrow" the signature Deep Purple keyboard sound of Jon Lord on the tracks "At Your Touch" and "In Love". And yes, they blatantly "steal" Kiss drummer Peter Criss' opening drum beat from "Love Gun" halfway through their "What Would I Know" track. The critics may even be right in arguing that The Datsuns run guitar solos through their amps in a way that would make MC5 members proud. But the band surely begs pardons from their rock n' roll forefathers with regard to these sins, and vocalist Dolf Datsun at least croons and wails over these riffs like few vocalists before him. In addition, his bandmates provide the necessary guitar hooks and subtle backing vocals to blend the overall sound into a rather captivating aural experience.
So do The Datsuns rely on hype to get through the day? No way. If "garage rock" being trendy today ever evolves into the next "grunge" movement of the new millennium, efforts like this album will go a long way towards defining the sound in the history books.