A review from last Friday’s show (7/10/23)at Joshua Blues Club, Como. The following is translated, but if you read Italian head over to LOUDD SONGS & STORIES and read the original there. Thanks Stefano Nicastro for taking the time to review us. Grazie mille!
09/10/2023
Live Reports
Datura4, 07/10/2023, Joshua Blues, Como
Dom Mariani's Datura4, with their rock-blues strongly influenced by the classic seventies sound, gave a great live show to Joshua Blues in Como for the last stage of their European tour.
Raise your hand if, in 2015, you thought that Datura4 would be the musical "third life" of Dom Mariani & Co? I certainly don't!
Datura4, for those who don't know them, are Australian guys who are certainly not "first-time": Dom Mariani (former frontman of the Stems, garage band of the 1980s, and then lead singer of DM3), the very nice Jozef Grech (who in over the years he replaced Greg Hitchcock (also a veteran of the Aussie scene) on second guitar and the rhythm section composed of Warren Hall and Stuart Loasby. Although Dom Mariani has always been faithful to a markedly power pop sound, with the new band he offers a rock-blues strongly influenced by the classic seventies sound . At the time I thought that Demon Blues (2015 - already programmatic title of everything that would follow) could be considered the divertissement of the Australian rocker in search of new "old" stimuli and, perhaps, also a larger audience.
From 2015 to today, however, Datura4 have churned out 5 albums on an almost annual basis, where the mix offered is a primordial soup of electrified blues, proto hard rock and lysergic distortions, which found its points of reference in the classic groups of that era. Given the musical composition proposed, it is easy to assume that the group could give its best live, and so it was. The last stage of the European tour (which however only touched first Iberian and then Italian soil), thanks to the guys from Otis Tours, touched the little "pearl" of the Joshua Blues of Como, allowing me and the Lombard fans to attend a concert that is certainly old style , but played impeccably. Datura4 did not hold back, a set of around 16 pieces (with the cover of "Oh Well Fleetwood Mac" combined, with a clever medley, with "Going back to Hoonsville") which saw the presentation of pieces from all the their albums, with the predominance of the last three: Blessed Is the Boogie (2019), West Coast Highway Cosmic (2020) and the latest Neanderthal Jam (2022). So forget about any technical devilry, Datura4 play a healthy old R&R with the classic lineup of 2 guitars, bass, drums, 1,2,3, and so on. We immediately started strong with the torrential blues of “Looper”, and then moved on to the southern rock of “Digging My Own Gravfe” gradually increasing the volume and unleashing cascades of wah wah solos (that little pedal also called "Cry Baby", trademark of a series of great musicians from Jimi Hendrix, to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Steve Satriani).
A note of mention also goes to “Sounds of Golds”, the demonic boogie of “Worried man's Boogie” and the previously unreleased “Overlord”. But it would be impossible not to also mention “Bad Times” or the super electrified blues of “Ooh Poo Pah Doo”, or “Mother Medusa”, supported by Warren's powerful drumming.
In short, although not exactly, as the English say, "my cup of tea", these concerts have a "detox" effect for me. Of course, the ridge between tackiness and good music, especially for a genre like this, is very thin, but with musicians of this kind who have been on stage for over 30 years, the risk has been totally dispelled by a compactness of sound that has made it more how enjoyable it all was.
#australianrock #boogierock #bluesrock #classicrock #hardrock #stonerock #heavybluesrock#psychblues #psychrock