Like their spiritual forebears the Ramones, the Donnas keep it simple - but not simple-minded. If their rip-roaring garage-rock were any more basic we would be dealing with sub-atomic particles, and clutter has been reduced in the name department by each member calling herself Donna. With less to remember, the California quartet devote themselves to a tongue- in-cheek popscape comprised of bad boys, illicit booze and self-styled kissing contests.
Their idealised universe has yielded albums such as The Donnas Turn 21 and the current Spend the Night. Still to come, surely, is The Donnas Land Their Man, but as their act compels them to remain forever adolescent, the saga will probably stop short of The Donnas' White Wedding.
If their eternal-little-girl shtick is dubious, they set matters right on stage: they rock ferociously. The barrage, led by tiny guitarist Donna R, instantly activates the head-banging enzyme: only seconds elapse before the room is a shoal of thrashing bodies. Their show renders redundant the old complaint that female rock bands have to be twice as hard as men to be noticed: twice as hard as the Donnas seems to be the new benchmark. They raise the bar for microphone-swinging, riff-raging punk-metal, and do it loudly.
Structurally speaking, they may only have one idea (Donna R goes in blasting, singer Donna A caterwauls and R rounds things off with a flashy solo), but they pour everything into it. It would be good to know what cocktail of hormones and Hooch is running through their veins.
That said, A is a weakish link, unable to exploit the potential of the teen-angst lyrics. One-liners such as, "I must've had too many Diet Cokes, cos I'm laughing at all your stupid jokes" (from All Messed Up), are full of comic possibility, but A roars through indiscriminately. That is when she is not telling kindergarten-level Michael Jackson jokes that deservedly fall flat: "Why did Michael Jackson cross the road? To dangle his baby from the window. Whooo.") As she bawls in the next song, that is just B-O-R-I-N-G. And odd, too, because she is otherwise a halter-topped lioness, predatorily strutting in front of this hard-as-nails crew.
