Sharp Blue: Spend the night

The soundtrack for this weekend was provided by the Donnas’ new album, Spend the Night. Like two of my other favourite bands, Ash and Kenickie, the Donnas main ambition seems to be to chronicle the exhiliration and boredom of being young, cool, and in a band. Unlike those other bands, the Donnas seem to be happy to dispense with sparkle or dynamics or originality. There’s nothing here we haven’t heard dozens of times before. Indeed, there’s nothing here that the Donnas themselves haven’t done dozens of times before: whereas Turn 21 was a substantial step beyond Get Skintight, this is really just more of the same.

The Donnas certainly aren’t Sleater-Kinney. However, if you aren’t looking for deep insights or subtlety or the sound of the future or lyrical poetry, this is good stuff. Donna A’s voice drips with the casual cruelty of teenage girls, but turned up to eleven. The music itself seethes with the electricity of primeval rock’n’roll. It’s the sort of record you want to play really, really loud for the sheer joy of doing so. I love it, even though I suspect that by any rational criteria I shouldn’t. Rock is full of such guilty pleasures.