“We just wanted to step it up a little bit with this record and show some of the other things we’re capable of,” explains CHRISTIAN LIVINGSTONE, guitarist with New Zealand via London rockers THE DATSUNS to LUCY MACGREGOR.

Livingstone is talking about the band’s latest longplayer, Smoke And Mirrors, which the rockers are bringing live to Australian shores later this month. “We wanted to incorporate some of the different styles and influences we’ve always loved but have never been really apparent,” he continues, when asked to described the impetus behind the new LP. “I don’t think we had a game plan as such – we just wanted to start writing songs and see what happened. And because we ended up with so much more time, we started writing really different songs.”

Together with his bandmates – frontman, bassist and co-writer Dolf de Borst, guitarist Phil Buscke and drummer Matt Osment – you could be forgiven for wondering just what the hell Livingstone’s been up to these last couple of months. Bursting onto the scene in 2002 with high-octane singles from their self-titled LP like Harmonic Generator and MF From Hell, the group quickly found themselves touring with the likes of the White Stripes and landing the praises of Dave Grohl, who described the band as “what the world needs”. Another album, Outta Sight, Outta Mind and an exhaustive number of shows later, the band had relocated to London and, laughs Livingstone, were on the verge of driving each other insane. By mid 2005, a small break was planned – which, as the guitarist explains, turned into a much larger delay while they explored where the hell to go next.

“This record ended up being recorded in two sessions earlier on this year,” says Livingstone. “We did some stuff in Wales, and then in London as well, around June. It was done very quickly in the end – but it just took us a year and a half to get into the studio! After all that time waiting, trying to decide who to work with and whatnot, it was done really quickly – we were like, ‘I just want to rock!’ We had all the songs; we knew exactly what we wanted to do, so we were like, ‘OK, get in there, put that mic over there, turn that amp up to 10 and let’s go!’” he laughs.

Less straight-forward rock & roll than its predecessors and featuring everything from slide guitar to gospel choirs, Smoke And Mirrors is a welcome return from a group whose live show is still one of the best in town. In the midst of a three-month tour, Livingstone says they’re amused at folks’ reactions as to where they’ve been.

“I’m not sure why people are already using the word ‘comeback’,” Livingstone laughs, “because we’ve done three records in four years, which is pretty quick, really. But in some sense there’s a bit of a thing that we haven’t been around, I guess because we toured so much at first. We were on the crest of that wave – there was so much hype at first, and that’s died down. The second record was backlash time. So now we’ve got this one and hopefully people will listen to the record and be judged on its merit. It feels like a fresh start.

“The diehard few that are out there have been excited about it for a while,” he grins when asked about what he hopes the band’s fans will think.
“You just gotta hope that when people get it people excited about it. Not, ‘What is that horrible noise that’s been blasting out!’”

The Datsuns play the Zoo (supported by The Casanovas) on Sunday Nov 19. Smoke And Mirrors is out now through EMI.

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