West Australian Music Industry Awards Hall of Fame inductee Dom Mariani (the Stems, the Someloves) brings his long-running hard rock project Datura4 to the Barwon Club this month.
The Perth-based outfit come to Geelong on Sunday, April 23 as part of their east coast tour, which includes dates at the Great Club in Sydney, the Gumball Festival and iconic Melbourne venue Cherry Bar.
The band will be touring their fifth album, Neanderthal Jam, with the cross-Nullarbor trip a precursor to their European tour later this year.
Many of Neanderthal Jam’s 11 tracks are heavily influenced by the hard rock sounds of the early 70s, with latest single Digging My Own Grave reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.
However, the album has shades of psychedelia, blues rock, boogie and funky pop as well, with first single Open the Line a prime example of the latter.
Frontman and guitarist Mariani said the addition of keyboard player Bob Patient (Dave Hole, Matt Taylor’s Chain) in 2017 for the band’s third album, Blessed is the Boogie, had allowed Datura4 to expand their range of sounds.
“There are a lot of influences that we bring to the jams; I used to listen to a lot of the heavy, hard rock bands that were around when I was a teenager, and there’s a heavy blues, kind of boogie influence,” he said.
“But I think we turned a corner when Bob joined the band. It really opened up the idea of writing tunes featuring keys, and Bob’s got this amazing repertoire of styles.
“He can play great blues piano, Jon Lord-style organ, funky clavinet. So we don’t just stick to one thing, we bring in a lot of other influences like the psychedelic thing and boogie.
“It’s a melting pot of different styles. My thing is to try to write songs that have memorable riffs and are well put together through a jamming process, which we really, really enjoy.”
