Spend the Night

Sex, Sex and Sex
by: john reed

While Spend The Night may be the major label debut for the Donnas, that does not mean that the former indie-supergirls have cleaned up their act one bit…which may be a good thing.

The Palo-Alto quartet - Donnas A., R., C. and F - who have been compared to the Runaways more times than they care to remember, have finally outlasted the novelty stamp that followed them for their initial four releases on Lookout Records (The Donnas Turn 21, Get Skintight, Donnas and American Teenage Rock-N-Roll Machine).

The band {(real names: Brett Anderson (vocals); Allison Robertson (guitar), Maya Ford (bass) and Torry Castellano (drums)} are finally garnering the mainstream success they acted as if they never cared about (mainly by playing along as MTV darlings and frolicking with the cast of the reality series "Surf Girls"), and they did score a bit of a hit earlier in the year with the not-so-subtle "Take It Off." It is perky song, but not far from the back seat, party-hard lingo the girls have been banging out for some time now.

The former musical comparisons to the Ramones have now been replaced with licks that closely resemble early KISS (Dressed To Kill/Destroyer era) and Anderson does at times come off as a Paul Stanley wanna be (that is…if Stanley were a female). Though the lyrical atmosphere is still sexually charged, due in part to the fact that bassist Maya Ford is the main songwriter, her subject matter is getting a bit stale (e.g. boy crazy and horny). But Stay The Night is still fun and the girls do have some valid aptitude (especially Robertson and her infectious power chords). However, the Donna's may suffer if the narrowness of the lyrics is not expanded in the future.

But, who knows? The overwhelming sexual innuendoes in KISS songs never hurt their career. 26-Jul-2003 9:25 AM