Grown-up teen rockers The Donnas crash party with new album, hot opening acts
By ALAN SCULLEY
Get Out

When The Donnas made their 2002 CD, “Spend The Night,” the band had a specific motive for making it a fast- and hard-rocking record from start to finish.

“It was our first major-label record and we had a really big goal with that one,” says Torry Castellano, drummer for the all-female band. “We knew that a lot of people were going to be seeing us for the first time, and we wanted to make sure that everyone out there — and our old fans, too — knew that we were a rock ’n’ roll band. So we wanted to play loud and at 10 the whole time and kind of make our (expletive) rock record kind of thing.

“Like we would sing about things that guys had been singing about in rock ’n’ roll forever and kind of show that girls could do this kind of music, too,” she says of “Spend The Night,” which produced a hit single in “Take It Off” and sold nearly 400,000 copies. “People were like, ‘So are you going to have a ballad?’ ‘No way! It’s going to be loud and fast the whole way through.’ And it was, and I’m glad we made that record. I like it.”

But for the band’s new CD, “Gold Medal,” The Donnas put themselves under no restrictions. The resulting record may very well redefine the musical image of the group, which also includes singer Brett Anderson, bassist Maya Ford and guitarist Allison Robertson.

“Gold Medal” is easily the most diverse Donnas’ record yet. The CD definitely rocks — in fact, it's tougher sounding than any of the band's other releases — but this time the band moves away from the punky hyped-up tempos that have long been a Donnas trademark.

“Don't Break Me Down,” for instance, verges on metal, with its trudging guitar riffs and deliberate, pounding beat. Other songs, such as “Fall Behind Me” and “Is That All You've Got For Me” also downshift the tempos, and as a result sound more spacious and dynamic. On the title song, The Donnas settle into a rollicking folk-ish feel that is an entirely new direction for the group. The Donnas, though, haven't lost their affinity for melody.

The CD features several songs, such as “Friends Like Mine,” “Out Of My Hands” and “It's So Hard,” that are as catchy as most anything in the band's back catalog. Even a heavier song like “Don't Break Me Down” boasts a decidedly catchy chorus.

“I think that we've always just been interested in classic rock music, this straight-ahead kind of rock and roll and not nu-metal and punk rock and not this or that,” Castellano says, summing up the musical shifts of “Gold Medal.” “I think there are a lot of classic rock (influences) on this record.”

‘Love partying and boys’

“Gold Medal” also stands as a departure lyrically. Up to now, The Donnas have been known for writing funny and sarcastic songs, many about guys — both the dreamboats and the losers — and some that targeted snobby girls and knocked them down a few pegs.

On “Gold Medal,” many songs take a turn in a more serious, thoughtful and personal direction. For example, “Friends Like Mine” examines the fickle nature of friendship, while “Revolver” touches on the “what comes around goes around” nature of deceit.

“We definitely love partying and boys and being on tour and everything. But I think before we always kind of shied away from expressing ourselves in certain ways in the lyrics,” Castellano says. “I think now we finally felt OK with kind of sharing other sides of us, and I think it was just time.”

According to Castellano, The Donnas wanted to stretch out as well in order to avoid feeling like they were writing to a formula or being typecast as musical and lyrical one-trick ponies.

“I think if we had made another record exactly like ‘Spend The Night,’ it would have been (formulaic),” she says. “I didn't really feel like when we were writing ‘Spend The Night’ and playing ‘Spend The Night’ songs that it was a formula. But I think if we hadn't kept moving and kept challenging ourselves lyrically and trying different things, I think we just wouldn’t really be feeling it.”

The Donnas’ fear of typecasting is understandable given perceptions that have surrounded the group over the years.

Anderson, Ford, Robertson and Castellano first got together to play as band in 1993 at a school talent show in their home town of Palo Alto, Calif. They were 14 at the time.

They decided to continue as a band after that performance. Billing themselves the Electrocutes, the group originally pursued a harsher, more complex sound.

That musical direction began to change when they met a local musician and aspiring band manager Darrin Raffealli. He had the idea to re-name the group The Donnas and convinced the women to all use the first name Donna and the first initial of their last names as stage names.

Raffaelli played a key role in the songwriting and production for the first two Donnas CDs — “The Donnas” (1997) and “American Teenage Rock ’n’ Roll Machine” (1998).

Ramones redux?

On their third CD, 1999's “The Donnas Get Skintight,” the band members took control of their music, parting ways with Raffaelli and taking over all songwriting. “Get Skintight” boosted their profile considerably, as more critics discovered the group.

The 2001 CD, “The Donnas Turn 21” drew even more press and set the stage for the group's move from indie pop-punk label Lookout Records to Atlantic Records. “Spend The Night” followed very much in the vein of the preceding two records with its rapid-fire, sugar-sweet rock songs.

Over the years, the use of the Donna first names, and the band's reliance on fast and catchy tunes had prompted frequent comparisons to the Ramones — a band in which the members all adopted Ramone for last names and whose albums all stuck to a similar hyper-fast three-chord punk sound.

The Ramones comparisons never sat well with The Donnas, Castellano says, noting that such comments shortchanged the musical growth of the band.

“I feel like for the last few records, ‘Turn 21’ or ‘Spend The Night’ or whatever, I don’t really think any of those records — and especially this one — I don’t think they sound very Ramones-like,” Castellano says. “Still, in a lot of the reviews or whatever, people say that. ‘You're just like the Ramones.’ Of course, we love the Ramones, and who doesn't? But we feel like we have grown a lot from our first record. I'm hoping that musically and lyrically people listen to us with kind of fresh ears. I think a lot of people think about us like we're just a one-trick pony. I don't think we're
like that at all.”

The Donnas live set figures to showcase a good chunk of the “Gold Medal” CD. Castellano says about a half-dozen new songs have been included in the set so far. But she also says the show will have a few treats for long-time fans as well.

“We decided to bring back a few songs from the first three records that we haven't done in a really long time,” Castellano says, before joking that it's taken the band some effort to re-learn the older tunes.

“We were listening to our iPods, trying to figure them out,” she says. “We used to play them so fast I can't even believe it. It's like, ‘How did I used to do that?’ But I think people who come that know those records will be excited.”