515. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes (1982)
















Track Listing

1. Blister in the sun
2. Kiss off
3. Please do not go
4. Add it up
5. Confessions
6. Prove my love
7. Promise
8. To the kill
9. Gone daddy gone
10. Good feeling

Review

This is a truly great album again, the Violent Femmes produce one of those rare things which is an album from the 80s that really feels like it could have been made tomorrow, or five years before it was done or five years from now. This is a totally timeless piece of music (well it could hardly be from before the 60's, but you know what I mean).

Ok, you might listen to this and think, "Wow someone has been listening to the Modern Lovers on repeat". And you wouldn't be wrong, this is not completely original and owes a big debt to Jonathan Richman, that said the Femmes pull it off spectacularly, furthering a style which had the population of 1 in the short lived Modern Lovers.

This is basically the time for the birth of alternative music as we know it today, and the Violent Femmes are definitely at the head of the thing. They never made anything as good as this, but then they didn't need to in order to become legends. There is not a single not amazing track in the album.

Track Highlights

1. Blister In The Sun
2. Add It Up
3. Kiss Off
4. Gone Daddy Gone

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

* Ethan Hawke's character in the 1994 film Reality Bites, plays a cover of "Add It Up" with his band Hey That's My Bike.

* A May 2005 episode of the television series How I Met Your Mother featured engaged couple, Marshall and Lily, trying to sneak into a high school prom to see if the band, The 88, who Marshall had tentatively booked for the wedding, could play the couple's song, which was "Good Feeling."

* Gnarls Barkley's 2006 debut album St. Elsewhere featured a cover version of "Gone Daddy Gone."

* "Add It Up" was used as a track in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.

* The film, Lost and Delirious features "Add It Up" in a scene.

* Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine covered the song "Add It Up" into a Lounge style on their 2005 album "Aperitif for Destruction".

* "Gone Daddy Gone" borrows a complete verse from Willie Dixon's 1954 song "I Just Want To Make Love To You." The Femmes give proper credit for this in the liner notes of their debut album.

* The song "Blister in the Sun" is the song on the previews for the show Psych on the USA Network.

* The song "Blister in the Sun" plays at the beginning of the My So-Called Life episode entitled "Betrayal," originally aired January 12, 1995.

* "Blister in the Sun" appears in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank as part of a radio retrospective on the '80s.

* "Gone Daddy Gone" also features in the seminal '90's Italian film Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo.

* Songs from this album were covered by Guster (with some assistance from its creators) on an episode of MTV2's short-lived Album Covers series in 2004.

* The song "Blister in the Sun" is played as the background music in a 2007 Wendy's commercial. This was seen as a point of contention by bassist Brian Ritchie, who filed suit against Gordon Gano in August 2007.

Add it Up: