Punk rock girls the Donnas are leaving their label of four years, the independent Lookout! Records, and making the jump to the majors with Atlantic Records.

The band -- singer Donna A (Brett Anderson), guitarist Donna R (Allison Robertson), bassist Donna F (Maya Ford) and drummer Donna C (Torry Castellano) -- joins Lookout!'s most famous alumnus, Green Day, who left the label after two albums, releasing their major-label debut Dookie on Reprise Records in 1994, not without some backlash from the punk community.

But whether Green Day's brief difficulties would follow the Donnas never entered into the girls' decision. "Worrying that people are gonna say we're sellouts is not a concern for us," Donna A says. "We've always wanted to be as big as we could while still doing what we want to do, and we'd been with Lookout! for a really long time. They'd been great for us but we just wanted to reach a lot more people, and we needed bigger label to deal with that."

While major-label deals often mean the smoothening out of a band's rough edges, Donna A insists the band will be the same old party-loving, tough-talking, boy-chasing Donnas. "It's not like we're gonna make a new sound," she says. "If you liked us before you're not gonna hear this album and be like, 'Oh God, what's going on?'"

The Donnas already have ten songs for their next album, the follow-up to last year's The Donnas Turn 21. They will record with producer Robert Shimp, who worked on the band's last record, during March and April at San Francisco's Toast Studios. The as-yet-untitled release is expected this summer.

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(February 7, 2002)