Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes - 180g Vinyl LP

Originally released in 1983

One of the most distinctive records from the first days of alternative rock and an enduring cult classic, Violent Femmes brought the tense, jittery, hyperactive feel of new wave to a then unlikely context: raw, amateurish acoustic instrumentation. The music also owes something to both the urgency and straightforwardness of punk, but with minimalistic drums, Brian Ritchie's busy acoustic bass riffing and simplistic, to-the-point songwriting, the Femmes forged a sound all their own.

Still, one of the main reasons Violent Femmes became the musical embodiment of young adult angst is lead singer and songwriter Gordon Gano. Naïve and childish one minute, bitterly frustrated and rebellious the next, Gano's vocals perfectly captured the contradictions of adolescence and the torment of making the transition to adulthood. Clever lyrical flourishes didn't hurt either; while "Blister in the Sun" has deservedly become a standard, "Kiss Off"'s chant-along "count-up" section, "Add It Up"'s escalating "Why can't I get just one..." couplets, and "Gimme the Car"'s profanity-obscuring guitar bends ensured that Gano's intensely vulnerable confessions of despair and maladjustment came off as catchy and humorous as well.

The songwriting throughout is no-frills but effective, with straight pop structures like "Please Do Not Go" remaining uncluttered enough for every minute detail to be immediately apparent, and fragile closer "Good Feeling" tender and spacious in the same way the best Velvet Underground ballads were. Arriving right when punk rock was mutating into hardcore, Violent Femmes offered a contrarian counterpoint to the overt aggression of the band's more distorted peers. These incomplex songs played on unamplified wooden instruments carried as much bile as the most ear-shattering punk band, and conveyed it all in a toxic mutter that was all the more intense for its relative quiet.

The album helped create what became the template for college rock and subsequent movements in alternative music, and the Violent Femmes would refine and revise the formula that arrived here in its perfect, acerbic form for decades to come.

Steve Huey