Glutter Relisten: VIOLENT FEMMES

“The first time I heard the Femmes, I felt that finally, FINALLY, someone had articulated exactly what it was like to be me: 16 years old, writhing with anxiety, tormented by hormones, wishing desperately to be someone else. It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by — these songs are still as fresh and edgy as if they’d been written yesterday. Go ahead, put on “Kiss Off” and scream along when Gordon Gano starts that crescendo rant about “one, one, one ’cause you left me and two, two, two for my family and three, three, three for my heartache and four, four, four for my headache…” and see if you don’t feel like you’re 16 again, too.”

“I loved this album when I first heard it, a friend played it on a road trip when my Mom was driving the fat suburban to the lake at 14 years old and it hasn’t aged a bit. This cd busted the cherry of my musical experience to date. After this came my interest in punk.”

“The Violent Femmes’ landmark debut album redefined punk music with their maverick acoustic sound. KROQ in Los Angeles put Blister in the Sun into heavy rotation. This catchy little song (actually more like the skeleton of a song) has the habit of showing up in the funniest places including in the repertoire of a hockey arena organist. The tortured and nervous lyrics of this first album lets you perfectly imagine the sweaty foreheads of some demented characters. Oddly, front man Gordon Gano makes it cool to be weak – on the verge on some breakdown and on the verge of lashing out. Most often he sounds like a sexually warped character alienated from, or obsessing over dependence on, some female. Other times he is a caricature of someone disenfranchised from the rest of us at large. The jagged guitar work (reminds me of those of Pivot Foots guitarist Brent Walker) matches his obsessions and serves to echo them like his mental demons nodding and jumping up and down in agreement with all his sentiments. We the audience witness the whole mental illness dancing party. They were once described as a “coffee house trio gone insane.”

This album is an absolute must have.”