The Donnas

It’s tough to come up with a description of this new album from Bay Area all-female pop-rock combo the Donnas. Maybe it’s the Go-Go’s with bad attitudes. Or the Runaways, but without Lita Ford’s stellar guitar work and Joan Jett’s over-the-top bad-girl vocals. It’s competent pop-rock for pissed-off straight girls, with rather strident vocals from an impossibly young-sounding Brett Anderson, frontwoman for a quartet that includes Torry Castellano on drums, Maya Ford on bass and Allison Robertson on guitars. These songs are all about bad breakups and worse choices in men. The refrain on “It Takes One to Know One” says it all: “I may not be a man / but you’re not one either.” The best tune is “Revolver,” a more vocally restrained, if also more threatening, ode to love gone truly, truly bad.