The Datsuns, Astoria, London <br></br>Blondie/INXS, International Arena, Cardiff

I know it's only rock'n'roll but it's better than a game of squash

The biggest compliment I can pay The Datsuns is that Lester Bangs would have adored them. I can just picture the legendary gonzo rock critic, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous, tearing a Coldplay album out of some provincial radio station's CD drawer, whacking on The Datsuns instead, and screaming "You make me feel... like a motherfucker from hell!" If the phrase hadn't already been used for Bangs' collected writings, The Datsuns might have called their debut album Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung. The foursome, from Smalltown, New Zealand (Cambridge, pop 11,000), make a noise which encapsulates the hormonal frustration and just-for-kicks destructiveness which afflicts anyone who grows up where the spotlight doesn't shine.

The Datsuns were discovered by Jack White, who knows a thing or two about revitalising genres which have been left for dead. The fake anger of the Blink 41s and Sum 182s does nothing for Christian Datsun, Dolf De Datsun, Matt Datsun and Phil Datsun (real names Livingstone, De Borst, Osment and Somervell, but they're invoking the namesharing spirit of the Ramones, so let's respect that), and they make a primal, unreconstructed, bestial noise which boots the living daylights out of any genre with "nu" in front of it.

As chance would have it, to see The Datsuns tonight, I have to tear myself away from our own Old Metal visionaries, Lowestoft-via-London's marginally but significantly superior, The Darkness. The similarities are striking, right down to playing their guitars behind their heads and going walkabout on someone's shoulders. If The Darkness are reanimating old AC/DC riffs, The Datsuns are doing the same for Deep Purple.

With the exception of Dolf who, with his geometric haircut, skinny-fit red shirt, white winklepickers and tight black flares looks more like a New York new waver, they all look the part: hair which hasn't only been uncut for five years, but probably unwashed too.

None of this would amount to any more than period detail and back-story if they didn't have an armoury of killer tunes, prime among them "In Love", specifically the guttural way Dolf ejaculates "so cool!" while his bandmates howl "why do you you keep on running?" like hungry dogs. Then there's the mechanical animalism of the nonsensical "Harmonic Generator" ("she's like a harmonic generator... intermodulator!"), on which Phil Datsun, who used to be the world's 212th-ranked squash player, thwacks out the riff like he's trying to give number 211 a sound spanking.

The Datsuns are the new-old sound of barbiturates, patchouli oil and cheap red wine. I know it's only rock'n'roll, but I like it.

I don't get to see INXS in Cardiff, because someone has killed themselves. No, not him – some poor sod jumped in front of the train at Slough, dividing their own incalculable misery into tiny portions of inconvenience for thousands of total strangers.

Although it's debatable, of course, whether I'd have "seen" INXS anyway. What on earth possessed the remaining members of INXS to make them think that there was life in the old dog beyond the death of Michael Hutchence? Financial necessity? I doubt it.

Self-delusion that anyone could care less who the band's other personnel were, let alone pick them out of a police line-up? Possibly. The muso's perpetual inability to think of anything else to do with their life? Most likely. You can only take the "show must go on" mentality so far, and the INXS comeback tour, starring... oh, who cares, some long haired lookalike you've never heard of, is even less dignified than May, Taylor and Dean's attempt to spin out the life of Queen a decade after the death of its focal point.

There's been a lot of this around over the last decade – The Stranglers minus Cornwell, The Bunnymen minus McCulloch, The Undertones minus Sharkey – but INXS without Hutchence, the band's undisputed charismatic leader, must be the most ludicrous example of all time, with the possible exception of the advert I once saw for a gig by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band Without Alex Harvey (who were, at least, being honest). INXS are an INXS tribute band. But hey, I dunno, maybe they rocked.

I'm still explaining to the lady in the lobby of the CIA that yes, I do realise the show's already started and that's why I'm even more keen to get inside, when I hear a heavenly sound. "When ... I met you in the restaurant/ You ... could tell I was no debutante..." Debbie Harry was on the front of the first Smash Hits I ever bought, wearing an Australian army hat and a pair of shades. Blondie's new single was "Dreaming", and the lyrics were printed inside. The heavenly sound I hear through the double doors is that very song.

Tonight, seeing them in the flesh (to coin a phrase), hearing the euphoric descending chords of "Dreaming", I am 12 again. With the difference that, whereas I didn't understand concepts like "the very embodiment of the Pop Art ethic", I understand it now.

Debbie Harry is trying quite hard not to look like the first person I ever fancied. With her naff waistcoat, knee-length boots and a pair of purple velvet hotpants which are pleated in such a way that she appears to be wearing a giant nappy, she looks like she's escaped from Puss in Boots at the New Theatre down the road.

However, she does not succeed. Partly because her hair – no longer the witchy grey locks of recent chat show appearances – has been restored to a supercool blonde bob with one black punk-rock streak. But mainly because she still has that face: wide enough to land aeroplanes on, the kind of face which was made to be plastered across the biggest billboard on Times Square. When God or Mother Nature or genetic chance has given you cheekbones like that, there's not a lot you can do about it.

Unlike INXS, this really is Blondie, with the core of Chris Stein (guitar), Jimmy Destri (keyboards) and Clem Burke (drums, CBGBs t-shirt) still intact.

The biggest surprise tonight is that, against all odds (and contrary to my worst fears), Blondie, now making their second comeback, are bloody wonderful. In a way, it shouldn't be a surprise at all: Blondie were always more about experience than youth. Pushing 30 when fame struck, Harry really was "no debutante", and these songs, with their sassy, seen-it-all worldview, befit a woman of a certain age.

Every now and then she starts shouting erratically and yelping the lyrics. At one point, she inexplicably tries to amuse us with a crappy talking Frankenstein toy. She's like your mad, slightly wanton aunt who tries to chat up your mates.

"It's just the hits, baby, just the hits," she tells us with no apologies given or needed, although she warns us "we're taking liberties with them." This means that they murder "Atomic", leave "Call Me" bloodied in a ditch, replacing the galloping "Race With The Devil" rhythm of the original with a traditional 4/4 thud, and "The Tide Is High" sounds a bit Butlin's (then again, maybe it always did).

The pop-punk classics are magnificent: "Hanging On The Telephone", "Sunday Girl", "One Way Or Another", and the epic spite of "Rip Her To Shreds" ("Oh, you know her, Miss Groupie Supreme!/ Yeah, you know her, Vera Vogue on parade!/ Red eye shadow! Green mascara! Yuck!").

As well as "Maria", the song which we hoisted to number one despite the dreadful "you've got to SEE HER!" rhyme simply because it was so great to have Blondie back, they do play one or two even newer songs. I won't insult you by saying "they sound good", but I can honestly say "they sound like Blondie", which is virtually the same thing anyway.

Just when I'm thinking I wish they'd play something less obvious, maybe "Shayla" off Eat To The Beat, they strike up the opening chords to... "Shayla", my favourite Blondie album track. Which segues into "Union City Blue", my favourite ever Blondie single.

The encore is Blondie's dalliances with dance: the pseudo-Moroder disco of "Heart Of Glass", and "Rapture", their bizarre, brilliant rap single about an alien who descends upon New York's clubland and starts eating vehicles and venues: "You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too, Mercurys and Subaru/ And you don't stop, you keep on eating cars/ Then when there's no more cars you go out at night and eat up bars where the people meet..." Blowing us a kiss goodbye, Debbie grinds those teeth together and grins. I must be dreaming.

s.price@independent.co.uk

Blondie/INXS: Brighton Centre (0870 900 9100), Mon; London Arena, E14 (0870 512 1212), Tue; Wembley Arena, London (0870 733 1001), Wed