The Donnas Turn 21

It is infectious in the best and most viral sense of the word -- the songs get under your skin and thrash around.

They've tempered the cheerleader quality of their vocals, and the breakneck pace has slowed down just enough for you to discover that, somewhere along the line, they learned to play and sing. [#48, p.85]

A punk-rock attitude and metal licks are all that are necessary for these four chicks to show the world what they want. Turn 21 is way heavier than the bubble-yum power-chord punch-punk they started out with—you know, the kind of three-minute tunes that came so easily when you were rehearsing after school for your first big show. But when they want to, the Donnas can still pull it all out and go Mano.

Their strongest and most distinctive effort to date. [#151, p.71]

The Donnas are utterly convincing...

While they've evolved into a band that can actually, like, play more than a handful of chords, they wisely stick with what they know best -- trim, fast-paced, crunch-guitar-filled songs about sex and partying.

The Bay Area punk-rockers mix early Ramones with '80s metal.

The sound misses the arenarific pump of 1999's Redd Kross-produced Get Skintight, and with that album's move from junk-punk to semi-pro metal now complete, the talent gap in the group has started to glare. [2/2001, p.108]

The Donnas do what they do just fine, but, four albums into their career, you can't help but want to see a little bit of growth in place of arrested development.

The Donnas have reached the legal drinking age in their native California, even if their foxy glam/punk-rock remains fixated on teenage preoccupations...

The quartet's fourth album is interchangeable with its third, maintaining the pop polish that made Get Skintight (1999) a sugar-buzz classic

Face it, if The Donnas Turn 21 sounded as shamelessly sexy as the lyrics and tarted-up images, it'd be a hell of a little rock & roll record. Instead, this inspires feelings of guilt instead of guilty pleasure.

Every song drips with bawdy attempts at sexually shocking the listener. But just as Vince Neil screaming "girls, girls, girls" and name-checking strip bars is unlikely to whip a woman into a frenzy of amour, the Donnas attempt to titillate and fail miserably.