The Donnas

Like obvious inspirations the Ramones and AC/DC, the Donnas couldn't care less about reinventing themselves with every album. They're four sugar-and-spite femme fatales cruising for boy toys in their lemon-scented rides and pretending they're mini-mart punk's answer to Kiss, circa Destroyer, over and over again. At their best, the Donnas offer a guileless take on adolescent alienation; they traffic in kicks, not catharsis, fun rather than rage, and they absolutely, positively, do not do ballads.

Together in various incarnations since grade school in Palo Alto, CA, the four Donnas initially performed songs written for them by producer Darin Raffaelli, who played Kim Fowley to the girls' underage Runaways. On the debut, they sing juvenile-delinquent anthems such as "Everybody's Smoking Cheeba" and "I Wanna Be a Unabomber" at blitzkrieg-bop tempos. American Teenage Rock 'n' Roll Machine gives the quartet a twist of glam-rock, but it's with Get Skintight that the quartet finds its voice: the suburbia-in-excelsis worldview of a John Hughes flick transplanted to a post-Green Day world. The production by Steve and Jeff McDonald of California kitsch-pop maestros Redd Kross slows down the tempos just a notch and fattens the melodies into arena-rock bad-girl sing-alongs. The Donnas Turn 21 is Skintight Part 2; it reshuffles the same five chords, lives to "party like Cheech and Chong," and substitutes a faithful cover of Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight" for the previous album's take on Mštley Crue's "Too Fast for Love." On Spend the Night, the sound and themes haven't changed, but the skills of the musicians have improved markedly, particularly Donna R.'s Ace Frehley-inspired guitar work. (GREG KOT)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide