Friday, September 28, 2018

Violent Femmes "s/t"

There was a time in my life where I believed this album was standard issue to all women. Upon inspection it may have been more of a period piece (I swear I didn't intend that pun) since any female under the age of thirty looks back at me puzzled if I ask them about #theviolentfemmes  . For a solid decade of my life you could bet that any girl I found interesting had a beat up cassette of this album on the floor of their car. I imagine that for a lot of girls who hung out with arty skater boys that most of the testosterone fueled bands really didn't address their own personal angst. I'm not saying that they couldn't appreciate the anger as an energy, but let's face it: it gets pretty neanderthal at times. Then I imagine some college radio station played this record and the combination of super intelligent wordplay over frantic acoustic guitars struck a chord with them (another unintentional pun). But this is all conjecture. Every woman I found interesting loved this disc. So I bought a copy to try and infiltrate their headspace. It's a damn good album. I was at a place in my life where I was very open minded to music (especially if it was recommended by a collegiate siren) so the lack of electric guitars didn't faze me, neither the the nasal vocals but it's the lyrics that get one. Sophisticated and innocent sounding, clever and vulgar. This has turned out to be a lifelong favorite. It leads me to wonder though: what are the art school ladies listening to these days?

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