Preview
THE DONNAS
Thursday, April 21
The Warehouse
Anyone who has seen The Donnas would notice that their drummer is a maelstrom onstage. Channelling The Muppet Show’s Animal, 26-year-old Torry Castellano makes many of her peers sitting on drummer stools look like shy sissies. Like the rest of her bandmates, she’s a flurry of long hair and well-deserved sweat. In person, she’s as peppy as she is onstage. Despite being on the road for 18 gruelling months at a time, Castellano is utterly gracious and just as sweet as you think she would be.
Until last October, the Bay area quartet released albums that were straightforward, blustery rock ’n’ roll. We came to know them as punk-rock outcasts who were jamming in the eighth grade and preferring their Poison and AC/DC records to the Heathers in their high school. By age 19, they found a home at hip Lookout! Records with two releases out of the gate in the same year – a self-titled album and their official debut, American Teenage Rock’n’Roll Machine (1998).
Their debut loudly proclaimed their cheeky predisposition to hot wheels and hot boys. To some people, they were a bit of a novelty, like the Olsen twins. To others, The Donnas were quickly diversifying the realm of rock – they were cracking into a testosterone-dominated world with a few winks and a whole lot of back talk.
With each release – from 1999’s Get Skintight to Turn 21 in 2001, fans watched The Donnas grow up from a playful garage-rock band to accomplished rock outfit. With their popularity evident from Donnaholics spanning the globe, the band were set to introduce themselves to the mainstream with their 2002 major label debut Spend the Night.
Then came the new album that has slowly become the fan favourite. Identified as their mature effort, The Donnas released Gold Medal late last year. Although it’s a stunning album, Castellano explains that it has taken some time for the album to sink in.
"I think that there has been some people that have been a little afraid of it, to be honest," she says, with a good-natured laugh.
"Before they even heard the record, they heard ‘oh, there’s some acoustic guitar or there’s some organ on this record.’ They were like, ‘whoa, what went wrong, they’re going to be soft now.’ They were freaked out. Some of the people also were a little concerned about Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan) producing us, and thinking, ‘oh, he’s going to change them and they’re going to be all poppy.’"
Castellano says the feedback has a recurring theme – people gave the record more than one spin and got a feel for it. Now, fans insist it’s their favourite album in The Donnas’s discography.
"I know there is some acoustic guitar or organ or whatever on this record, but I think some of these songs are heavier than anything we’ve ever done, you know what I mean? And I think that if you give it a chance, then you definitely can hear that.
"There are some bands out there that want to make the same record over and over and over again, and that’s fine for them, but we’ve never been that band. We always want to get better at our instruments and we always want to push ourselves musically and in our songwriting and everything. Y’know, you have to try."
They came through with flying colours – Gold Medal is an incredible illustration of how to heighten one’s game. Used to pushing themselves and the envelope on many levels, Gold Medal appears to be a deeply promising clue to the second phase of The Donnas’s sure-to-be long and mightily successful career. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.