Two Words, One Answer.
gold medal
 How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals $17.99 Students of all ages know the name Michael Phelps. Very informative and kid friendly explantions of what it took for Michael Phelps to win 8 gold medals.  Gold Medal $18.98 They've never been the most original band, but the Donnas have usually been one of the most dependable rock bands out there. You always know what you're getting on a Donnas album, so 2004's Gold Medal came as quite a shock. Instead of their usual 70's punk and pop metal rewrites, the album is filled with brooding, lightly psychedelic rock numbers, featuring acoustic guitars and their most melody-driven work to date. Not the biggest career-switch ever, but certainly not what we were expecting from the Donnas. For the most part, it's pretty successful, although some Donnas fans might wonder where the party went. The album's first track sounds like the last gasp of their signature style. "I Don't Want to Know (If You Don't Like Me)" is classic Donnas party-rock, all quick guitars and big chorus. After that, the group slowly shifts gears with the midtempo "Friends Like Mine", which still sports an Ace Frehley-sized riff, but the mid-song handclap breakdown and more ambitious vocal melodies point the way towards where the Donnas are looking to go on this record. It only gets wilder from there: "Don't Break Me Down" is a brooding metal number, "Is That All You've Got for Me" turns the distortion way down and singer Brett Anderson almost coos her vocals. Some songs still sound like the Donnas of old, like "Fall Behind Me" and "It's So Hard", but even these are filled with nuance and restraint that would have seemed almost alien to the Donnas from the album previous. The culmination of these experiments is the title track, an almost acoustic jam of a tune with playful background vocals and gently strummed and picked guitars, and even a piano interlude. On songs like this and the slow-building "Revolver", the Donnas are pushing hard to move into new musical territory, and escape the pigeonhole their career had been in up to this point. Of course, it totally didn't work. Fans didn't react well to this new sound, and the Donnas were forced into a retreat on their next album, the Judas Priest/Joan Jett-aping BITCHIN'. So it looks like if they really do want to try something new they're going to have to start a new band. That's unfortunate, because while a lot of the songs on this album don't quite have the energy level to wow the crowd in a typical Donnas set list, they're still well-constructed, memorable songs that rank among the band's best work, and it's a shame that the group isn't given the opportunity to go in this direction more often, because they're pretty good at it. Hopefully they'll make another album in this vein again soon. |
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