Typical of the same level-headedness that sees the band nonchalantly toss off the sorts of high-octane rock moves which would snap Angus Young in half as though they were walking to the milk bar for a packet of Winnie Blues, Phil is refreshingly straightforward about the rock & roll explosion that has sent The Datsuns to the front of the class. “For us, we’ve always been listening to rock & roll bands that have always been around for us. It’s just that now you get to read about them and see them on TV; people are just focusing more on these rock bands. But a lot of them have been around for a long time - you know, we’ve been around for about eight years, and it’s the same with The White Stripes and The Hives. For me, it’s weird that they call them ‘new’ bands – they’re not new bands!”

It must then be reassuring for The Datsuns to know that if the Sultans of Cool do buck the trend, the group can safely return to the fan base they forged well before the zeitgeist jumped on the bandwagon? “Oh, totally!” agrees Phil, “We’re totally prepared for how fashion can be as fickle as anything. We make music for ourselves, not anyone else, we play music because we love it, and no fashion could take that away from us”.

The love of the game is a concept that is frequently mentioned by The Datsuns, though even the most enthusiastic and dedicated band will often see their career plateau beyond a certain point; is it conceivable to wonder if things would have turned out differently without the intervention of the fickle but largely influential UK music press? “I don’t know how it would have worked out. We would have just gone back there to tour a lot more, like what we’ve done. We would have just kept touring either way, I don’t know if the press would have taken notice of us or not. But we’d still put out our own records like we always do. We just do things the way we want to do them, and if people want to take notice they will, if not, then we’ll just do it ourselves”.

The band had been doing it themselves for a long time, slugging it out in the face of a conservative and unresponsive hometown [Cambridge, NZ], when they were finally able to give up their day jobs early last year. “Last February we all left New Zealand, and we all gave up everything. We thought we were going to do, like, a six-week tour of America and the UK – but it ended up being about 14-months long, and we’re still going”. Phil laughs at the possibility of the tour extending indefinitely a la Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. “I’m not planning on going for fifteen years”, he says, before adding, “not non-stop, anyway”.

They’ve most recently visited the US and Canada, where the reaction has been warm but slightly apprehensive, with audiences used to anodyne pop or scruffy but non-threatening retro-rock somewhat confronted by The Datsuns artfully pure testosterone swagger. “It’s a totally different place”, Phil says, “We’ve been to a lot of places that we haven’t played before, it hasn’t been massive crowds, but it’s building up, you know? That’s all were about, just playing more shows, and then we’ll be back here again and hopefully more people will come along. But with the shows, we have been getting a good reaction for the shows every night.”

Australia holds a special place in the hearts of The Datsuns. For a band who have graced the stages of everything from The Mercury Lounge in NY, NY to The London Astoria, their choice of their favourite gig so far might raise a few eyebrows. “We did one show which was a real turning point for us, which was at The Town Hall Hotel in Melbourne. I mean, the place is the size of a lounge-room, but it was packed out and the alleyway was full up with people. We were just like, ‘holy shit!’ People were starting to stand up and listen to what we were doing, and we got so much enthusiasm from that that we were like, ‘alright – we come from a small town in NZ, and we’re playing in Melbourne and people like it, let’s go somewhere else as well’. That was a kick-arse show”.

The Datsuns’ live shows give intimacy a new meaning, with the band members frequently immersed in the crowd or on the bar busting metal guru solos while skinny-hipped young things toss their hair in rabid approval like a Timotei commercial directed by Rick Rubin.
Phil is passionately committed to crowd involvement at gigs and the breakdown of artist/viewer divides. “That’s what all shows should be like, you know, get people involved, get people having fun. Get people to go crazy and dance and stuff – because we are! It shouldn’t be this separated thing of us being in a fishbowl and everyone just watching us”.

And given the incendiary excitement levels of The Datsuns’ live shows, it would have been little surprise when NME voted them ‘Best Live Band’. Do they feel that live performances are a lost art? “I think so… I mean, I’m not about to judge any bands. But for us, playing live is the most fun thing to do. And for us to win an award that we actually care about, it would be that one, because we put the most time and effort into playing live, and we have the most fun doing it”. Do they have a mystical pre-gig ritual to get in the appropriate zone? “We don’t have any circle of power or anything. No yoga moves”, laughs Phil, “We don’t really think about it – we just do whatever we want, and whenever we want. We just basically eat and sleep and then walk on stage”.

And then, like motherfuckers from hell, blow the suckers the fuck away.