Violent Femmes

Gordon Gano (son of a Baptist preacher, struck in his teens by Jonathan Richman, Johnny Cash, William Faulkner and the reading of the Bible), Brian Ritchie (multi-instrumentalist with a passion for Jaco Pastorius as well as Sun Ra and his Arkestra) and Victor De Lorenzo (son of immigrants of Sicilian descent, passionate about theatre and pop art) meet in Milwaukee (it's still unclear whether the band's name came from a brand of sanitary pads – La Femme, to be precise – or from a piece of city slang used for the cross-dressers working downtown). United by a love of jazz, gospel and country&folk, a punk attitude, the first stirrings of the British dark-wave scene and a hunger to play live, they will soon start haunting every club in town, favouring acoustic instrumentation with a sound (built on equal parts acoustic simplicity and arrangement complexity) that will become their trademark. They will never taste commercial success, but the verve of their shows, the grace of their records, the anger and precision of the music, and the irony and sarcasm of the lyrics (one could almost call it literature, given the strong debt to a giant like Faulkner) will elevate them to the status of the ultimate cult American 'alternative' band of the '80s – the Nerds' favourite.

Their local live activity draws the attention of Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, who has them open for Chrissie Hynde's band, allowing them to break out of the city scene and reach New York, where they also win over the local critics. Not long after, the coveted record deal arrives too (with Slash, which at the time was hoovering up virtually every talent on the American new-wave scene).

The debut by the 'violent femmes' sends a shock through the American underground scene: while every other band is busy cranking up their amplifiers, their approach is to apply the lessons of punk to folk and stars-and-stripes country. Mindful of the teachings of Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers as much as those of the Talking Heads, the trio conjures a melodic punk-folk melange, where Gano's raspy voice and his spare, cantankerous guitar style fuse with Ritchie's oblique bass lines and De Lorenzo's scrappy, improvised rhythms (improvised in every sense, given his tendency to shun regular drums in favour of buckets, pots and other variously assembled percussive implements). 'Blister In The Sun', had it been a touch more electric and sung by some pale, emaciated young thing from Southern California, would have been a perfect radio summer hit back then; instead it won the hearts of a few thousand teenagers and would in time be hailed as a punk anthem, despite the total absence of electric guitar. 'Kiss Off', on the other hand, is punk and cabaret at once, with guitar and bass aping some '60s Impulse! or Blue Note jam session. 'Please Do Not Go', with its reggae rhythms (quite unusual for the era and the genre), cedes the spotlight to Brian Ritchie, who slips in a fine display of his instrumental skill with a bass solo: it's a heartfelt, ironic love song, sweet and heart-wrenching, its little backing-vocal choruses gently mocking much of the syrupy pop of the '70s.

'Add It Up' opens quietly like a gospel number, with a voice delivering the 'call' whose 'response' comes not from a mighty chorus of voices but from the entrance of the instruments, which with punk verve show X and the Blasters the way forward; once again, folk anger and punk fervour rule the roost. 'Confession' could pass for a traditional stolen from some Appalachian hamlet or some post-war Chicago basement, weaving together country and blues in a feverish melody, driven by the bass line and drums that don't so much keep time as fill the void left by Gano's voice, screaming out his despair and loneliness, until it erupts into a liberating punk howl, an acceptance of his own suffering: pain that doesn't redeem, that doesn't uplift the spirit, but simply tells of its own damnation and the acceptance of oneself and one's condition as a human being.

'Prove My Love' and 'Promise' bring back the speed and the pop, a welcome breather with their little choruses and their near-melodies (the second comes closer to a classic riff than anything else on this record). 'To The Kill' sounds like something Johnny Cash might have written had he been born 30 years later; on 'Gone Daddy Gone', the sound is enriched by a xylophone that traces the melody throughout the song (though obviously a million miles from Lionel Hampton).

The closing 'Good Feeling', as its title suggests, is a small country fresco, tenderly melodic, with a violin solo and a piano that embroiders the melody throughout the song. Tender, and just right for wishing your sweetheart goodnight.

CD reissues from 1987 onward add two bonus tracks, namely 'Ugly' and 'Gimme The Car', originally released as a 7-inch single in December 1983: the first is a fast little pop tune clearly indebted to the Cure of 'Three Imaginary Boys', while the second is the anthem of every newly-licensed eighteen-year-old with a Saturday night date with the girl of their dreams, and is said to have set off one of the most furious pogo pits Milwaukee had ever seen the first time it was played live.

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13/11/2006