#18
Violent Femmes
"Violent Femmes"(1983)
Although "Murmur" by R.E.M. is consistently reffered to as the beginning of alternative rock moving on from post-punk, I think this album does a much better job. This album is more than just jangle-pop, and although I can't really make a completely worthwhile opinion since I havent heard all of "Murmur", this is a better album. The Violent Femmes have that Holden Caulfield-esque relatability that I call the Richman factor, since the first album that I feel excecutes this perfectly is the Modern Lovers first album. Other bands I would classify as possesing the Richman factor are Neutral Milk Hotel and Daniel Johnston, and it's defined by simple naive lyrics that are sort of anti-teenage-when Beat Happening sings about holding hands after sex, when The Modern Lovers sing about wanting a girl they care about rather than a one night stand, and on this album when The Femmes sing about trying to get just one kiss in "Add It Up", an album highlight.
Lyrically, this is naive, vulnerable, and completely relateable to me, the 12th grade loner in 2006. On top of all that, the songs are all solid, and this is a great example of an album with no filler. It opens with "Blister in The Sun" the great 80's alternative sing-along, and if you like the sound on this song-the off kilter singing, the drum set being played with brushes, the acoustic instuments that are being played as though they were being plugged in at the SUperdome, than theres not much I could fathom having fault with throughout the album.
Another great thing about this album, is that the breakthrough originality is in the sound-other than that, these are simple, well made pop songs, which of course has all been done before. But because the sound is so unique, and the lyrics so personal, it's easy to fall in love with. Take "Please Do Not Go" with it's reggae beat and typical Femmes lyrics. It could have been written years before as a generic reggae song, but The Femmes add so much personality and orinality with their sound that the songs attains a sort of brilliance that is greater than the sum of its parts.
This is the first 80's album that I really fell in love with, and proved to me that that decade often shunned for bands like Duran Duran and Motley Crue, had so much to offer underneath its glossy vapid surface. I thought of it as striking oil in a desert, this album being the first of many oil fields I would stumble upon in 2006, not to mention the ones I continue to find over two years later.
92/100