Ouch, I’ve just had my ears burned, in the best possible way of course. New Zealand band The Datsuns’ fourth album Headstunts scorches in with “Human Error” a track so energized it could even make an oldish fossil like me suddenly revive my long defunct, wired persona of old.
The other oldish fossils, who prefer crosswords to such an incendiary full throttle track, may be able to work out the title of the album. Headstunts is an anagram of The Datsuns. Now that I’ve had it pointed out to me it’s kind of obvious. Safe to say though that I wouldn’t have realized it all by myself.
Singer Dolf de Borst tells me that the album, which is due out in the US on May 12, is ‘lyrically about mind games.’ He goes on to say that they were always aware of the anagram but, ‘didn’t want to make it too obvious’. One thing that is clear, even from the outside, is that the addition of new drummer Ben Cole has further energized the band.
Dolf explains, "it was like making our first record again, with new influences and new abilities. With a new person we were able to feed off each other in different ways, and also revive some old ideas that didn’t click before".
Feed off each other, they clearly did. Headstunts is positively wired, capable of injecting enough power-pop fall-out to make you drive way over the limit. Dolf continues, "when we started making this album we played a lot together and we were doing long drawn out songs, but we ended up making a power pop record. It’s a lot more pop than anything else we’ve done but it still sounds heavy."
Heavy sounding it most definitely is. Power pop, punk-pop, call it what you will. It’s high energy whatever way you look at it. Yet there are still some of those more extended pieces left and the album ends with a mighty fine example.
The first real pause for breath comes with the impressive “Eye Of The Needle”. A real stand-out that shows the huge steps the band is continuing to take. It is a track of such maturity that it demands to be played over and over and over. Atmospheric, moody, smoulderingly effective, and just plain old good. Watch out for a scorching burn in the tail, then try if you might not to hit replay again.
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