Violent Femmes

The Violent Femmes revolutionized the concept of “folk revival,” both through their deliberately rough-and-amateurish approach and through the “folk” they chose to resurrect—a genre that, in fact, didn’t exist and which they invented. Yet, in Kripke’s theory of possible worlds, all their masterpieces could just as easily have been classics of tradition, without contradicting the subsequent evolution of popular music. In fact, they taught, like the Holy Modal Rounders and a few others, how to draw creatively from the vocabulary of tradition.

The Violent Femmes were three boys from Milwaukee (Wisconsin) singing about the complexes and frustrations of suburban adolescence, channeling the concentrated neuroses of the Velvet Underground and their romantic pathos into a more popular (and strictly acoustic) context. Despite alienated lyrics, vicious riffs, and a decadent gait, what redeemed their music from the suspicion of intellectualism was Gordon Gano’s jovial, adenoid singing (reminiscent of Richman), the instrumentation (besides the leader’s psychedelic guitar, Brian Ritchie’s mariachi-style bass, and Victor DeLorenzo’s percussion on a bucket and two brushes), and the disarming wit that peeked through even the angriest invectives.

The songs on their first album, Violent Femmes (Slash, 1982), were born from the intersection of blues, jug, and folk practices, guided by minimalist, amateurish punk. The influence of Richman’s teenage vignettes is clear in Blister In The Sun, a country-vaudeville piece dipping into jug thrills, and in the plainer melodies (Please Do Not Go). Blasphemous passion for kitsch infects sketches like Prove My Love, propelled by a syncopated choral refrain, and Gone Daddy Gone, their most demented gag—a psychotic nursery rhyme accompanied by surreal xylophone; yet it does not diminish the force of the anthems: Kiss Off, built on naïve interweaving of guitar, bass, and drums, with a progression driving the sound to the edge of visceral Stones-style rhythm and blues, and Add It Up, which bursts in like a slightly ramshackle “railroad” blues, in the midst of which Gano creates tension with a stuttering swing solo before everything erupts into a roaring gospel-blues. Elsewhere, the sound is more narrative, inspired by Reed’s neurotic blues, albeit transfigured by Gano’s psychotic soliloquies, as in the melancholy, nostalgic finale of Good Feeling, an intense melody accompanied by the plaintive sound of a violin. The Violent Femmes epitomize true “garage sound,” played with a certain sloppiness and with makeshift instruments, yet infused with all the enthusiasm and rage of suburban kids. The underlying theme is sexual frustration, which in some verses transcends pubertal complexes to venture into Freudian territory.

Hallowed Ground (Slash, 1984) is a much more serious album that confidently engages with the tradition of American folklore. Gano, whose tone oscillates between a philosopher-jester and a fervent preacher, presents himself as a Ry Cooder of the bourgeois provinces. In tragic ballads like Country Death Blues, paced by bass-tuba and banjo, the Violent Femmes essentially compose vignettes with moral reflections on everyday life. Immersion in the picturesque religiosity of the common folk is realized in documentary-like episodes, such as the Salvation Army spiritual set to country & western rhythm with a doo-wop chorus in Jesus Walking On The Water; or the more loping, blues-harmonica-driven It’s Gonna Rain; or the drunken bebop syncopation of Sweet Misery Blues. Yet it is a gospel professed in the tones of imposing, intense dramatic architectures that originate from the dirges of the Velvet Underground and acid rock, only to fracture and crumble in psychotic convulsions (Never Tell), or in vibrant free-form ballads à la Patti Smith (Hallowed Ground). The arrangements (now also electric) indulge in antiquated instruments, and the trio’s interpretive skill is now highly sophisticated. Consider I Hear The Rain, a whimsical exoticism layering three incoherent spirituals atop one another, or the transformations of their most eccentric song, Black Girls, a relentless succession and remixing of jug, rockabilly, free jazz, rhythm and blues, toy-swing, samba, and music hall choruses—perhaps their masterpiece.

Corpses Of Foreign Wars (Fundamental, 1986) was a collaboration with Eugene Chadbourne.

The Blind Leading The Naked (Slash, 1986) essentially continues their foray into religious folk, picking up high-profile session players along the way such as Leo Kottke, Jerry Harrison, and Fred Frith, but largely abandoning the eccentricity that had been their trademark. Intriguing moments like No Killing, a tragic gospel ballad, Faith, a measured rhythm and blues, Breakin' Hearts, a literally galloping country and western, and Cold Canyon, a martial, tribal hoedown worthy of the Holy Modal Rounders, end up lacking bite due to flattened arrangements, while more conventional (and commercial) tracks dominate, such as Love And Me Make Three, a perverse Stones-style boogie, I Held Her In My Arms, a melodic, sweeping Springsteen-like rhythm and blues, and Heartache, a clattering power-pop ballad. The album suffers from the disputes between Gano and Ritchie, who eventually went their separate ways. Gano recorded a secular gospel album under the name Mercy Seat with a hyper-sensual Black vocalist, while Brian Ritchie pursued a career in avant-garde jazz-rock.

The band reunited for 3 (Slash, 1989), where Gano returned to introspective confession, and the sound receded to the minimal acoustic style of the first album. However, the Violent Femmes only occasionally manage to recapture the gloriously jovial style of their early days (Dating Days, Fat, Telephone Book, Lies—all the shorter tracks), that nursery-rhyme sing-song and haphazard accompaniment that evidently works only for the truly poor. In compensation, they unleash the most violent boogie of their career, Full In The Full Moon, complete with guitar distortions, and they playfully engage in Caribbean funk on World We’re Living For as if desperately searching for a new style.

Why Do Birds Sing (Slash, 1991) finally marks the Violent Femmes’ return to the acoustic, spartan, yet fiercely punk sound of their first album: Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie (the main composer here, obsessed with Eastern instruments as in his solo albums), and Victor DeLorenzo have not lost the verve and grit of their heyday; if anything, they have honed and sharpened it over time. Look Like That and Girl Trouble are the tracks most likely to delight nostalgics of Blister In The Sun, though the album often feels like “leftovers” from the golden years.

The three were now moving toward independent solo careers. Gano, in particular, attempted to be a serious composer, setting to music a piece by the Dadaist writer Walter Mehring (from this suite came the songs New Times and Agamemnon).

But New Times (Elektra, 1993), with Guy Hoffman (ex-BoDeans) replacing DeLorenzo, tiresomely repeats a formula that offers little room for variation. Saloon-drunk jokes like Don't Start Me On The Liquor and Mirror Mirror are now forgettable, while the true novelties, New Times and Agamemnon, seem to copy frameworks from Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart’s Safe As Milk, respectively. Even Key Of 2, which attempts to forge their version of hard rock, cannot alter the course. If anything, Gano seems more in his element as the old-time acoustic minstrel in I'm Nothing, or as a street musician of a bygone century in the player-piano waltz Jesus Of Rio.

Gano, in the meantime, composed three musicals (Oresteia, Desire Caught By The Tail, and Carmen).

Brian Ritchie, the bassist of the Violent Femmes, recorded several albums of a myth-making nature, in which, no longer constrained by his bandmates, he showcases his skills as an exotic multi-instrumentalist and eclectic arranger. Both Blend (SST, 1987) and Sonic Temple & Court Of Babylon are confused and pretentious works, but with I See A Noise (Dali, 1990) Ritchie achieved the long-sought synthesis of humor and encyclopedic ambition, particularly in the revisions of Two Tongues Two Minds and Religion Ruined My Life, and in the surreal gags Why Is The Baby's Head So Big and The Man With The Cigarette In His Nose.

Victor DeLorenzo, the drummer of the Violent Femmes, released a solo album in 1990, Peter Corey Sent Me (Dali), which is among the most creative and stylized of "roots-rock" (and certainly the best recorded individually by the three members). In the psychotically sinister style of John Cale applied to the theater of the absurd, DeLorenzo performs honky-tonk based on oblique rhythms, dreamy melodies, and “film noir” atmospheres (It Don't Bother Me, Of Love), finding only one moment of serenity in the delightful country ballad The Girl Has A Name. His strength lies in how he structures the songs, from the martial and jazz-infused Watching The Book, in which practically nothing happens to underline a sense of existential emptiness, to the ethnic ballet Abu Day Abu Da, playful and absurd.

Freak Magnet (Beyond, 1999), the first studio album in five years, finds Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie indulging in more robust rock and roll (Hollywood Is High, New Generation) but most of the tracks are remarkably unremarkable.

Victor DeLorenzo released the solo albums Pancake Day (1996) and The Blessed Faustina (1999)

Despite its impressive cast of guest vocalists, Gordon Gano's solo album, Hitting the Ground (Instinct, 2002), is also a disappointment. John Cale redeems Don't Pretend, PJ Harvey salvages Hitting the Ground, and a couple more (It's Money, Catch 'Em In The Act) hint at Gano's musical talent, but the overall picture is one of an aging artist who has already said what he had to say.

Brian Ritchie joined the Zen Circus for their Villa Inferno (2008), and then the Australian surf instrumental band The Break (composed of Midnight Oil members) which released Church of the Open Sky (2010) and Space Farm (2013).

Gordon Gano formed The Ryans that released Under the Sun (2009).

Victor DeLorenzo released the EP Infinite Prelude (2011).

After a long hiatus, the Violent Femmes reformed and released We Can Do Anything (2016) and Hotel Last Resort (2019).