When
the Datsuns
released their first album in 2002, it was in the wake of the
garage punk
explosion kick started by
the White Stripes
and
the Strokes
, so this New Zealand quartet was lumped in as fellow travelers -- an understandable miscatogrization, but one that doesn't quite describe what the band is. There's barely a trace of
garage
or
punk
in
. They're a '70s heavy
rock
band to the core. That was unusual when
The Datsuns
hit the streets in 2002, which garnered attention since it was, for want of a better term, a novelty, but within a year, there was a flood of bands that partied like it was 1973, even if nearly all of them were born closer to 1983. Many of them turned out to be better than
, too, particularly the
AC/DC
-worshipping
Jet
and the cheerfully ridiculous
Darkness
, who trumped the New Zealand quartet in two significant ways -- they could write songs and riffs. That's may be a little unfair, since there are moments on
where the band makes some pretty invigorating
rock & roll
, but two years later on their second album,
Outta Sight/Outta Mind
, they are a spent force. They're still stuck in the past, but where they could occasionally recall
Deep Purple
on their debut, they sound as turgid as
Cactus
throughout
. Former
Led Zeppelin
bassist
John Paul Jones
does his best as a producer, giving the album a clean yet heavy sound, but the problem lies with the quartet, who flail about on 12 songs as they ape classic heavy
without replicating it. Much of the problem is that the group is far too busy, relying on skittering single-note riffs when big power chords would not only hit harder, they'd be more memorable, instead of jumping around too often to create an impression. Lead singer
Dolf De Datsun
does make an impression with his thin, high-strung caterwauls, but he lacks flair. He, like his lead guitarist,
Phil Datsun
, is a faceless journeyman, and now that there are more
hard rock
bands -- both ironic and not so much so -- on the market in 2004,
no longer seem like a fresh novelty. They seem like a garden-variety
band, one that would have been generic and forgettable in 1974, and one that is generic and forgettable in 2004. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine