Welcome back to Left of The Dial! This week we’ll be listening to the Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut. The Violent Femmes is a folk-punk band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On this album, they consist of Gordon Gano on vocals, guitar, and violin, Victor DeLorenzo on drums and vocals, and Brian Ritchie on bass, xylophone, and vocals. Their debut came out in April 1983, and it’s easily considered their most successful album to date, likely thanks to the success of their single “Blister in the Sun.” What other hidden gems are on this record? Let’s give it a spin and find out!
Side A
Side A contains “Blister in the Sun,” “Kiss Off,” “Please Do Not Go,” “Add It Up,” and “Confessions.”
What better way to kick off the album than with easily the band’s biggest hit single? There’s a good reason for that accolade too; the energy of “Blister in the Sun” is something to marvel at. Gano’s vocals are melodic and smooth as silk, while still pairing well with the stripped-down guitar and wild bass. The whole thing comes off as chaotic, perhaps even messy, but Gano, DeLorenzo, and Ritchie perform with such dedication and gall that you can’t help but admire it. It’s comparable to The Dead Milkmen and, if you’re looking for a comparison outside of the realm of music, the work of ONE, the manga artist behind One-Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100. I have a lot of respect for artists who, despite their work being crappy on the outside, put enough love and commitment into their work that its inner beauty is able to shine through. I feel that that’s the best way to describe the Violent Femmes’ work on this record: it has a clear lack of polish and doesn’t technically impress the way more well-known artists do, but it has enough heart imbued into it that you don’t care if it’s bad, you just want to sing along and indulge in the naughty fun it brings.
Next up is “Kiss Off,” which gives the deuce to traditional song structure and manages to make it work. It starts off quiet and tense before exploding in a clash of bass and drums around 26 seconds in. Lyric-wise, it deals with some heavy feelings of rejection, loneliness, and pain, yet Gano delivers them with a cynicism that attempts to bottle those feelings up. It’s terrifying and impressive the way he can move his voice from a gentle croon to a nasally scream so quick, calling to mind how quickly emotions can escalate when they’re bottled up for too long. Speaking of transitions, let’s return to the song structure. After the opening and chorus, we get a spoken word section, followed by an instrumental and lyrical breakdown respectively before delivering a final chorus. What allows this to work is that the structure follows a constant composition, and the lyrics follow a similar yet distinct melody so they don’t sound too out of place. It gives you a lot of food for thought for such a simple song.
“Please Do Not Go” is the next track. Were you expecting to hear a reggae track on this record? Neither was I, and bless the band’s hearts they tried to make it work. The composition is quite good at replicating the style, and the lyrics match up nicely. The issue I have is with Gano’s delivery of said lyrics. He attempts the stereotypical Rastafarian accent for the beginning and ending of the song but drops it for most of the middle. As you’d expect from a singer that doesn’t naturally have the accent, it doesn’t sound good, so I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise that he uses it sparingly. This is probably one to skip.
Up next is “Add It Up,” which brings us back to the Femmes’ demented side. The best way I can describe the lyrical content on this track is…shamelessly horny. This would be a great time to mention that Gano wrote many of the songs on this record when he was 18 and still in high school. I think we all know how sexually frustrated teenagers can be, and boy does that shine through on “Add It Up.” The lyrics read like a poem scrawled mindlessly into a notebook during study hall, but the vocal delivery gives it some structure and coherency. This is probably the best example where the concept sounds bad on paper, but the execution is shockingly good.
Closing off Side A is “Confessions,” which delves into a bluesy, Rolling Stones sort of sound. Particularly, I hear a lot of the Stones’ cover of “You Gotta Move” in the composition, so I have to wonder if the Femmes looked to them for influence. “Confessions” makes great use of Gano’s endearingly messy vocals, getting louder and crazier as the lyrics reach peak emotional moments. I also have to commend how well the band executed a slower pace since the previous tracks have been much faster and more energetic. They’ve proven that they’re masters at conveying heavy emotions through their composition and lyrics, and this shows how wide their range is. It’s a great way to cap off this side of the record, so let’s turn it over and see what Side B offers!
Side B
Side B contains “Prove My Love,” “Promise,” “To the Kill,” “Gone Daddy Gone,” and “Good Feeling.”
“Prove My Love” takes a slightly sarcastic view on the typical “I’d do anything for my partner” kind of love song. While lots of the Femmes’ songs have a sense of humor, this one seems to take it a step further. The narrator admits that he’s developed a lot of issues and thinks that this new relationship will fix it, which is a pretty immature way to view romance. Later on, we get this line: “Third verse same as the first,” which admittingly makes this one of the few non-comedy songs I know of to actively break the fourth wall. These bits of humor give the song a lot of personality, even against the other songs on the record up to this point. Match that with the energetic composition and vocal delivery, and it makes for a fun and unconventional love song.
“Promise” is a personal favorite of mine, maybe because it’s painfully relatable on a few levels. It’s all about the narrator’s contradicting feelings about pursuing a relationship. He wants one, but then backpaddles at the last moment to avoid rejection. The vocal delivery goes above and beyond to relay the anxiety, as Gano stumbles and stammers through some lines like a shy kid asking his crush to prom. It’s endearingly cute, at least until the mood takes a hairpin turn to something way darker and deep-seated. He broods about some repressed hatred and pain as the instrumentals grow quiet and distant, only to turn back to the jangly and cute confessional that opened the song earlier. It’s a neat twist, though at this point it’s not unexpected from the band. Overall, it’s a great exercise in conveying emotion and pulling a fast one on the listener.
“To the Kill” dials up the darkness to 11, and not really in a clever way. There’s a clear noir influence at play, with allusions to Al Capone and Chicago, the windy city, which does set it apart compositionally. The narrator seems to have intentions to kill a recent ex-girlfriend, and it reaches comedic levels of edgelord-ness. You know exactly what I’m talking about, the same stuff you’d expect from a scene kid’s MySpace page from 2004 or an artist’s amateur work that they know is “oh-so-deep and revolutionary” while being overblown and self-satisfying in reality. It’s a phase I’m sure most of us have gone through, or perhaps some of us are still lingering in it. Whatever the case, it’s something we can all look back on and laugh at. “To the Kill” is clearly Gano’s expression of his own emo phase before the term “emo phase” was really popular, but it’s still a little endearing in that ‘so bad it’s good’ way.
The next track is “Gone Daddy Gone,” which was actually the first track from the band I became familiar with. I think it was a good one to start off with, too, because it has subtle examples of the Femmes’ messy and demented style without scaring newcomers away. It also has the sunniest composition on the record, utilizing a xylophone on top of the guitar, bass, and drums. The subject matter is still off-kilter as you’d expect, with the narrator admiring a girl from a distance, revealing in the breakdown that she’s already committed to another man and probably doesn’t have the same feelings for the narrator as he does for her. I highly recommend this as your starter track if you’re curious about the Violent Femmes, but don’t want to delve into the heavier stuff right away. It should give you a clear idea of whether you’ll like them or not.
Finally, we cap off the record with “Good Feeling.” Not unlike “Confessions,” it’s a slow ballad that’s shockingly potent in melancholy. It’s about wanting your positive emotions to stick around, especially when you’re overflowing with negative ones more often than not. Most of the record has handled its dark emotions with sarcasm and a sick sense of humor, but this track looks at it genuinely with zero irony. It seems like a more honest confession, which helps it hit home stronger. Gano’s vocals are simply amazing here, adopting a warm and vulnerable tone of voice to accompany the guitar and piano. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was expecting from the band, but I’m glad they made this one. It ends the record on a nice, resonant note.
Violent Femmes is a wonderfully messy record with lots of charm, especially for its unconventional sound. My top three tracks are “Confessions,” “Promise,” and “Gone Daddy Gone,” with an honorable mention going to “Good Feeling.” There are only two contenders for bottom tracks, which are “Please Do Not Go” and “To the Kill,” though the latter can still be enjoyed from an ironic viewpoint.
Rating: 8.5/10
Feature Photo by Becca Fauteux