picture by Maddy
Donors is a female-fronted band from Nashville, Tennessee, which features members of Shell of A Shell and Thirdface and has probably been around since 2017.
With mainly mid-tempo songs, the band is clearly on the post-punk side... but not only!
Summer 2018: Donors release a 7-track demo cassette on Glad Fact Records.
And what is really interesting here is that Donors doesn't dive head first in the post-punk clichés, but instead finds a personal mix between a mid-tempo kind of punk and some faster parts. The Move is a good example of the alternation of these two ideas:
Of course you got some more classic early post-punk songs like the very good Making Time or What Luck, but also the 70s rock vibe of the vocals on Good Eye (with a great background guitar à la Shopping) or the fast and proper 80s punk of Unseen...
In the end Donors is delivering a very high quality tape for a demo, with a lot of diversity and a great sense of the melody.
After a little change of line-up (I think), Donors is back in 2020 with another cassette (Self-Titled 7-track tape) and the atmosphere has changed a bit...
the lot is just colder, darker and maybe a bit less punk than the demo, but it doesn't mean it's not enjoyable...
And Donors manages to keep the diversity of the first tape: definitly punk on tracks like Top or Help Yourself, between cold rock and post-punk on Always Sometimes Never, the band even goes to the whole-band-sings side (a bit like the death punk rock of Murderer) on Coins Collect and Breakfast Anytime (which got a real Indus vibe too)...
It's just darker overall and Fine Print, the final song of the tape, is only confirming it!
So Donors manages to deliver a great diversity of songs, jumping from post-punk to death rock via more classic punk schemes... and not so many bands can do it so well! Good job!
You can listen to Donors on Rien à Faire #10.
N,J'Oi!
