The Donnas - The Donnas

If you were feeling charitable you could label The Donnas' debut as a tribute album. Alternatively, if you were feeling in any way vindictive you'd be looking up the word plagiarism in the nearest dictionary and putting a call through to the Ramones' lawyers. The songs may be their own but The Donnas have stolen the d-u-m-b philosophy and, unabashed, have squeezed their own compositions into the sacred template. Songs flash past so quickly an accompanying sonic boom is a distinct possibility. There's a fixation with sixties music and culture - rock and roll, high schools, drive-ins, girl group call and response - and a weak attempt at offensive humour with "I Wanna Be A Unabomber". The album is littered with enough Hey! Hey!'s, 1-2-3-4's, Gimme! Gimme!'s and I Don't Wanna's to satisfy the cravings of the most fanatical Ramones' addict. Add all of that together and the reason why this album doesn't work becomes readily apparent: The Donnas are not the Ramones!

What's the point? This could quite easily have been one of those novelty send-ups by The Chipmunks. Brett Anderson shouts and screams like a banshee using a malfunctioning megaphone, the guitars are brandished like clubs and strummed as though fingers have been amputated and replaced with sausages, while I'm convinced a proper drum-kit was outside their budget and so Torry Castellano is reduced to bashing tubs full of frozen peas. It's amateurish and enervating which normally isn't a bad combination, but here sticks so closely to the ideals of a far better band, the finished product is rendered redundant. It's as if The Donnas were formed in a petrie dish from the dissected tissue remnants of the Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy". They would slowly evolve a personality of their own and be able to afford a recording studio which didn't sound like the inside of a corrugated shed, but perhaps it's understandable why the band have always remained on the margins. They were never going to be as cool or as iconic as their greatest influence.

Released on 10 January 1997 by the indie label Super*Teem! Records, the self-titled debut album The Donnas introduced the world to an unapologetic, high-energy quartet from Palo Alto, California. Written and recorded while band members Brett Anderson (vocals), Allison Robertson (guitar), Maya Ford (bass), and Torry Castellano (drums) were still teenagers in high school, the record captured a fierce, unfiltered youthful exuberance. To lean completely into their gang-mentality aesthetic, the girls adopted anonymous stage monikers modeled after their punk heroes—becoming Donna A, Donna R, Donna F, and Donna C respectively.The album is a relentless blitz of lo-fi garage punk, clocking in at 14 tracks in just over 25 minutes. While the band would later transition into a slicker, arena-ready hard rock sound inspired by AC/DC and Mötley Crüe, this debut is pure, unadulterated three-chord punk rock heavily indebted to the Ramones and the Runaways. It established them as a formidable, self-contained force in alternative rock, catching the attention of Lookout! Records, who reissued the album the following year to a rapidly growing cult audience.

The Donnas stands as one of the most infectious, bratty, and delightfully hedonistic slices of late-90s punk rock. Musically, the album picks up the frantic, rapid-fire torch exactly where early American punk left off, prioritizing pure adrenaline over complex studio production. The instrumentation is beautifully raw and unpolished; Allison Robertson’s guitar scratches and stabs with a buzzsaw intensity, backed by a driving, no-nonsense rhythm section that sounds like it was recorded straight out of a teenage suburban garage. It is an album that doesn’t ask to be intellectualized—it demands that you bounce along to its breakneck tempos.

What makes the album so brilliant, however, is how seamlessly the band flips traditional rock-and-roll gender tropes completely on their head. Rather than acting as passive subjects, The Donnas step forward as aggressive, hilarious, and utterly brazen instigators of their own adolescent misadventures. They sing openly about cruising for boys, skipping out on school, and seeking out cheap thrills with an unfiltered honesty. By filtering the classic, male-dominated "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" ethos through an assertive teenage female perspective, they crafted a record that feels remarkably liberating and fiercely feminist without ever losing its sense of reckless fun.

The tracklist moves so quickly that the individual songs feel like rapid-fire bursts of energy. Highlights like "Hey, I'm Gonna Be Your Girl" and the anthemic "Let's Go Mano!" burst with addictive, sing-along choruses, while deeper cuts like "Huff All Night" and the hilariously plotting "Get Rid of That Girl" showcase their signature blend of sweet pop melodies and razor-sharp punk snarl. The inclusion of a frantic cover of The Beach Boys' "Drive In" beautifully highlights their underlying love for classic 1960s pop hooks, completely rewired through a wall of messy guitar distortion.

Ultimately, The Donnas is a triumphant statement of youthful rebellion that has lost none of its bite over the decades. It serves as an essential archive of a young band operating entirely on instinct, attitude, and chemistry before major-label budgets and polished radio mixing smoothed out their rough edges. It remains a flawless masterclass in low-fidelity garage rock, proving that all you truly need to make a great rock-and-roll record is a stack of loud amplifiers, a handful of hooks, and a perfectly defiant attitude.

Ripped from the 1998 CD release to MP3

1. Hey, I'm Gonna Be Your Girl 1:47

2. Let's Go Mano! 1:18

3. Teenage Runaway 1:55

4. Lana & Stevie 1:31

5. I'm Gonna Make Him Mine (Tonight) 2:39

6. Huff All Night 1:44

7. I Don't Wanna Go 1:30

8. We Don't Go 2:28

9. Friday Fun 1:56

10. Everybody's Smoking Cheeba 2:10

11. Get Rid Of That Girl 1:40

12. Drive In 1:34

13. Do You Wanna Go Out With Me 2:01

14. Rock 'N' Roll Boy 1:32

15. High School Yum Yum [Bonus Track] 1:26

16. Boy Like You [Bonus Track] 1:29

17. Let's Rab [Bonus Track] 1:09

18. Let's Go Mano [Bonus Track] 1:22

19. Last Chance Dance [Bonus Track] 2:06

20. I Wanna Be A Unabomber [Bonus Track] 1:30

21. Da Doo Ron Ron [Bonus Track] 1:26

22. I Don't Want To Go To School [Bonus Track] 2:04

23. I Don't Wanna Rock 'N' Roll Tonight [Bonus Track] 2:48