Hard rock laced with vintage blues
Dom Mariani. The Western Australian Music Awards Hall of Famer has a career that would merit an entire book (or two). The Stems, The Go-Starts, The Someloves, and DM3 are just some of the credits to his name.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, this article isn’t about the career of one of Australia’s most important musicians, but about his latest band and album, Datura4 and Blessed is the Boogie.
Released just over a month ago, Blessed is the Boogie is ten tracks of pure vintage goodness, a hard-driving rock and roll album with its blues roots proudly on display.
“Black Dog Keep Running” is a riff-heavy guitar god’s offering, resplendent with multiple, tasteful solos and a dash of funky wah wah pedal. This one track alone establishes the band as on par with any so-called supergroup of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Solid but not ostentatious, it’s the kind of hard rocking tune you can listen to over and over without ever getting bored.
The title track, “Blessed is the Boogie”, is the pedigreed offspring of Chicago blues and rock music, right down to the refrain of “boom boom boom boom” and the wailing blues harp. The choral sounding vocals lend it an unmistakable cool that’s hard to put into words except to say that if you can picture the most badass scene of the most badass character in an all-around badass movie, this is what’s playing in the background.
“Looper” opens with a positively Zeppelin-esque riff, quickly giving way to a wall of heavy guitar rhythm and plaintive lead. Once again, blues is in the DNA of this song, but you’d have to know it to hear it. To the naked ear, is a nasty, slinky precursor to the heavy metal music that came later in the decade.
“Run with Lucy” picks up the tempo from there, pulling off the Alice Cooper trick of simultaneously sounding upbeat and mean. It seems like as good a time as any to point out that while every track so far has featured some gorgeous guitar solo work, at no point does it sound redundant or superfluous.
Every lead line is perfectly tailored and timed to the song it appears in, not as common a condition in a world where lead guitarists are given license to “do some stuff there for a few bars”. It is a testament to the maturity of Mariani and company’s playing that they have all this horsepower at their command without ever overusing it.
“Ooh Poo Pah Doo” is pure anthem; a bit Gary Glitter, a bit Slade, it features Ray Manzarek style organ work that is untouchable.
The band demonstrates its versatility on the next several tracks, including “Evil People Pt. 2”, “Not for Me”, and “Cat on a Roof”. A hard rocking band they are, but there’s more to Datura4 than guitar hero glory days. They are capable and competent in multiple genres and prove it with a broad range of sound and style.
Rounding out the album is “The City of Lights”, a tune that, while staying true to the vintage stylings of the album, would not sound out of place in the least on any college radio station today.
Mariani is a man with an impressive reputation and an impressive talent and he has gathered together a group of his peers, Warren Hall and Stu Loasby, along with special guests Howie Smallman and Howie Shawcross, to create an album that earns its place in the Valhalla of legendary supergroups.
It is pure listening pleasure and it is available now through Alive Naturalsound Record.