Everybody loves a summer road trip. Of course, you can probably add that to the list of things you won’t be doing anytime soon. But hey, you can still dream of being a highway star. And while you do, you might as well spin the fourth full-length from these hard-driving Australian indie-rockers. In keeping with its handle, West Coast Highway Cosmic might be the perfect soundtrack for your involuntary staycation: 10 road-rested, psychedelia-spiked slices of old-school rock, organ-laced electric blues and freewheeling Outback boogie. All of them are designed for one thing and one thing only: To be blasted from a car stereo on a highway jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. I guess you could sit in the car, rev the engine and crank this up. Just remember to leave the garage door open.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed third album, Blessed is the Boogie, Australian rockers Datura4 have hit the motorway running for another sonic journey through burning boogie, dirty blues and rock & roll soundscapes on their follow-up opus West Coast Highway Cosmic. The title was inspired by the highways that the band has traveled to get to the recording studios they’ve been using over the four albums they’ve done so far. The two studios are 200 kilometres apart and situated along the southwest coast of Western Australia. The long and sometimes lonely drives back and forth along these routes have definitely played its part in the band’s creative process, and whether it be new ideas or just listening back to what they’ve done in a previous session the West Coast Highway Cosmic, as they like to call it, has been a constant spirit over all of Datura4’s studio recordings. West Coast Highway Cosmic sees Datura4 stretch out and experiment with their sound that they’ve been building on ever since their debut release Demon Blues in 2015. “I see every album as an extension from the previous one,” admits frontman Dom Mariani, “and I’m conscious about not rehashing the same things over. The collection of tunes on WCHC is slightly more eclectic than on the previous albums, which makes it really interesting and exciting for albums in the future. There was a more spontaneous and looser approach for the majority of the recording, where we would take the basic song idea and let things go until we had the take that we liked. We got into the grooves you might say. Bob Patient, who joined the group toward the end of the Blessed is the Boogie recording, was involved from day one on the new album and his keyboards play a bigger part and have added an additional flavour to the D4 sound. I wouldn’t say it’s a different direction, but more about exploring additional possibilities as musicians.”
