Datura4

Datura4 fuse vintage psychedelia, hard-charging boogie, blues shot through with rock energy, and classic hard-rock drive, then push the mixture through stacks of amplifiers, resulting in a group that inhabits the present while honoring earlier eras. Their first recorded statement of this high-impact, blues-rooted approach arrived with the 2015 album Demon Blues, whose sound merged hard-rock textures typical of the 1970s with boogie-flavored blues-rock of the same period. By the time Blessed Is the Boogie appeared in 2019, the lineup had been reduced from a two-guitar attack to a single guitarist plus keyboard, yet the band’s overall force remained undiminished.

The quartet includes multiple seasoned figures from Australia’s rock community: Dom Mariani handles guitar and lead vocals, having previously founded garage-revival favorites the Stems and later collaborated with DM3; Greg Hitchcock, who served in You Am I and the New Christs, also contributes guitar; Warren Hall, formerly of the Drones, occupies the drum chair; and bassist Stu Loasby appeared on DM3’s Rippled Soul. Mariani and Hitchcock, longtime friends, had long sought a vehicle that would allow them to explore wider musical territory, and they found it in 2011 when they launched Datura4, taking the name from a toxic bloom. Emerging from their Fremantle base in Western Australia, the band quickly built a following for live performances that injected contemporary vitality into classic rock & roll forms. In July 2015 Alive Naturalsound Records issued their debut, Demon Blues. Just twelve months later the group returned with its second album, Hairy Mountain. Blessed Is the Boogie, the third LP, introduced keyboardist Bob Patient in place of Hitchcock. After completing tours of Australia and the U.K., Datura4 tracked their fourth album across two facilities separated by 242 kilometers, fully incorporating Patient’s keyboards and adopting a more relaxed stance toward gritty garage psych and blues-inflected boogie. The resulting set, titled West Coast Highway Cosmic after the lengthy commute between studios, surfaced in spring 2020.