If you’re a Donkeys fan, you know the San Diego quartet from its decade-plus history, three exemplary albums on Dead Oceans and 2014 debut with new label Easy Sound Recording Co., Ride the Black Wave. You know they haven’t had a lineup change since forming in 2004 and that they’ve been nominated twice (winning once) for Best Rock Band at the San Diego Music Awards.
And if you don’t know The Donkeys at all but were, like most of the world’s television viewers at the time, obsessed with every scrap of informational minutiae related to Lost, you still know The Donkeys, in a tangential sense. The band’s song “Excelsior Lady,” from the 2008 sophomore album Living on the Other Side, was featured in the series, re-recorded as “Dharma Lady” and credited to the faux group Geronimo Jackson.
It’s easy to trace The Donkeys’ sound to their California roots, just not along the obvious Beach Boys-to-Laurel Canyon path (although those signposts dot the landscape). The Donkeys combine a Byrdsian jangle, a twangy soulfulness, a gently rollicking Pop undercurrent and a melancholic lo-fi vibe that suggests a team-building trust exercise between Pavement, The Grateful Dead and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, with a healthy dose of contemporary ennui, a kind of hopeful disillusionment.
Over The Donkeys’ last two albums — 2011’s Born with Stripes and last year’s Ride the Black Wave — the foursome has expanded its sonic palette ever so slightly, with a declarative focus defining the former and an experimental edginess guiding the latter. The through line on every Donkeys album is the band’s lyrical weariness even as they catalog the sun/sand/surf delights of their home state, which lands with the same ironic power of McCartney’s bright “It’s getting so much better all the time” optimism and Lennon’s dark “It can’t get no worse” counterpoint.
Like Dawes, The Donkeys will draw you in with a laconic allure and snare you with an irresistible musicality.
THE DONKEYS play a free show at MOTR Pub Saturday. More info
here .
This article appears in May 6-12, 2015.