Violent Femmes

Anyone interested in the Femmes should start with the debut album to understand what all the fuss is about, but this collection does a good job of cherry-picking worthy songs from the band's subsequent (and far more uneven) releases. It also includes enough B-sides and live cuts to appease completist fans.

No deep thinker and probably a jerk, Gordon Gano is the good-looking cad in a collegiate picaresque, putting himself across on feckless charm and endless libido. Most will grant the Femmes' 1983 debut its cult status and leave it at that, but the 19 titles otherwise unaccounted for on this typically irresponsible compilation suggest that they stayed young through the '80s. They get away with countless variations on the hoary "America is the home of the hypocrite"--"I Hate the TV," "Old Mother Reagan," "Lies," it goes on--and sell a lyric that begins and ends "Dance, motherf*cker, dance!" They score with obscure erotic escapades like "Gimme the Car" and "Out the Window." And having rendered the titillating faux-folk gothic of "Country Death Song" and the rank jungle fever of "Black Girls" doubly offensive with bad-boy cuteness, they then somehow make them illustrate a shallow postfolkie primitivism they transcend by exploiting. Their demiacoustic sound the essence of inspired amateurism even when surrounded by horns, sitars, Jerry Harrison, Michael Beinhorn, they remain funny, sexy, sloppy, irreverent, unpredictable, and above all lively--still unconvinced they'll ever have to worry about their permanent record. (Grade - A-)