Release Date: Sep 14, 2004
Genre(s): Rock, Alternative
Record label: V2
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With the relative flop of the Strokes' second album and the near-implosion of the Vines, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the 2002 garage rock explosion match up. Runts of the litter back then, Antipodean hairies the Datsuns' strategy for that "difficult second album" has been to come back as even more purified retro than they were before. Outta Sight/Outta Mind's cover imagery reeks of the 1970s; the rear cover loudly proclaims "produced by Jean Paul Jones" - of Led Zeppelin.
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 the Datsuns. They're a '70s heavy rock band to the core.