This, amazingly, is not your mother’s Donnas (so to speak). While the Sahara Hotnights continue to ply the same faux-balls-to-the-wall pop-punk template from Jennie Bomb (albeit with more polish this time out), the elder statesmen of female-fronted Ramones-esque punk has turned over a new leaf. Apparently content to leave behind the brasher-is-better days behind, the Donnas have hit back with a new formula—drop the “Donna X.” monikers, forget the skintight jeans and try for “respectability,” meaning better songs and a wider palette of guitar riffs.

And on this track at least, the Donnas pull it off. “The Gold Medal” bears practically no resemblance to the candy-coated punk of their early days, and is a far better song than the somewhat-unfortunate cuts on Spend The Night. The rest of Gold Medal veers away from its title track’s template sound, but I think there’s something worth saving here; if this truly is the next step in the Donnas’ evolution, then I wholeheartedly approve. If you really want the old Donnas back, Get Skintight will always be waiting.