Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes
Credit: Dr. VaruniKulasekera

Few songs incite the Pavlovian response of Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.” Its primitive, instantly recognizable two-chord guitar jangle and its concomitant punctuation of twin drum bursts can inspire the deaf to clap their heads in communal syncopation, as if responding to some tribal anthem, some secular youth hymn. It’s surely the most iconic song ever written about masturbation (sorry, Billie Joe Armstrong), which is the subversive truth behind its mainstream acceptance into the Great American Alt-Rock Songbook.

This is also why the song didn’t really work when Nouvelle Vague covered it, in 2009, and transformed it into a cool, sensual aphrodisiac. The song is supposed to be the antithesis of sexy; like everything on the band’s seminal (pun intended) self-titled 1983 debut, it’s about the frustrations of sexlessness, of haywire hormones and pent-up urges and the limits of boredom. The Femmes pulled you in with infectious chords and hummable choruses, but if you really paid attention to the lyrics, the songs were voyeuristic windows into a horny, jittery, depressed, deviant, murderous and sometimes unsettlingly relatable mindscape. But please, clap along!

Thirty-five years after its release, Violent Femmes’ debut is one of those astonishing mission-statement alt-rock albums, like License to Ill and Nevermind, in which every tune sounds like a single you’ve known since birth. Songwriter/vocalist Gordon Gano, bassist Brian Richie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo never topped it, which is why, all of these decades later, it still contains the largest share of the group’s set-list pie. We’d be just fine with Violent Femmes remaining a nostalgia act and playing that record straight through, but after 15 years with no original recordings to their name, the Femmes have just released an EP, Happy New Year, whose lead single “Love Love Love Love Love” channels the same catchy, frantic repression of the early years. Gano and Richie are in their ‘50s but still sound 20, horny and inspired, their dark anthems tempered by a sheen of ironic humor.

In one of those lopsided bills that we see a lot in South Florida, the band will open for Barenaked Ladies July 10 at Sunset Cove Amphitheater. Nothing against the witty mom-rockers in BNL, but you owe it to yourself to show up early. Another not to be missed opener… Colin Hay (Men at Work). Tickets cost $40. Call 561-488-8069 or visit ticketmaster.com.

~John Thomason