The Donnas - Spend The Night

Imagine you've got four rock chicks all hotter than Avril Lavigne (it's not that hard to be better looking that pig face, but still you get the idea) and you've half way to understanding the Donnas. The essential difference is that these girls can rock harder than most of the lame American exports and aren't manufactured by 50 year old marketing men with the idea of having an alternative rock chick for the kids too cool to like Britney. Of female rock groups are nothing new, but still in 2003 are a bit of a rarity and dare we say it for most rock fans a little a bit of a fetish.

The Donna's twists the macho rock lyrics round and sing them back from a female perspective so when we get rock & roll cliche's such as "You gotta stop spinning my head around. You turn me inside out" it doesn't sound like an out-take from Def Lepard, but something fresh and very now. The Donna's explore the same theme's of boys, alcohol and all nighters as longlost girl group Kenickie did back in Britpop, but they do with agressive stance of AC/DC and the Ramones rather than Fierce Panda 7"s we'd get from their British counterparts.  "Spend The Night" is 13 shots of rock to the head and each track is condensed to rock so primitive it would be churlish to debate the merits and pitfalls of each track. "You Wanna Get Me High" segues into "I Don't Care" and then onto "Pass It Around" and so on and so on, but you can listen to these riff's all day and you still would be pressing the repeat button every time.

Apart from the Sahara Hotnights and Fallon Bowman's new project Amphibious Assault these girls haven't got any competition unless you stretch things out to include Pink and Avril Lavigne and we all know that this time next year they'll both have moved onto the next musical fad.

Alex McCann

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