VIOLENT FEMMES

The Violent Femmes: Brian Richie (vocals, guitar, bass); Gordon Gano (vocals, guitar); Victor De Lorenzo (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Jim Liban (harmonica); Peter Balestrieri, Steve MacKay (saxophone); Bill Schaefgen (trombone); Sigmund Snopek III, Junior Brantley (keyboards); Abdulhameed Alwan (tabla, deff); Steve Scales (percussion); Drake Scott (background vocals).
Recorded at DV's Perversion Room, Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July to September 1985.
THE BLIND LEADING THE NAKED (1986) is a much looser affair than the Femmes previous outings. Still a three-piece, the band augments their sound with a number of additional musicians, a variety of instruments, and a mixed bag of studio effects. The album's mood swings from assertions like "I know that bad things are going down, I know that loneliness is all around" (from "No Killing") to "Bump and grind, have a good time" (from their cover of Marc Bolan's "Children of the Revolution"), and covers much of the ground between.
"Special" features the fret-climbing bass of Brian Ritchie accompanying Gordon Gano's song about being an outsider--cribbing a line from the classic song "Sixteen Tons" in the process. The album's highlight is "Faith," another in Gano's growing list of oddball religious tracts, featuring a call-and-response chorus and a wiggly harmonica breakdown. With a brief stop in fairly straightforward country ("Breakin' Hearts"), and a couple of studies in dementia ("Candlelight Song" and "Cold Canyon"), BLIND LEADING shows the Femmes experimenting a bit more freely, and coming up winners, as usual.

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