[rating=9.00]
Violent Femmes live up to the title of this first album in 16 years from founding members (and erstwhile enemies) Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie: given enough time, you can do anything.
It’s been a lifetime since their last full-length stab, and that’s part of why this long-awaited product is so satisfying. Not only does it stack up against the Femmes’s best (earliest) period, it’s their best work in decades, familiar without being redundant, its mood swinging from self-praise to group therapy, a carnival for cadavers. Gano, ever the sinister ringmaster, delivers his disheartened, faux-dour vocal over Ritchie’s grunting, string-rattling guitarrón.
Hearing this record for the first time will have you guessing—is this Hallowed Ground? Maybe 3?—but no, every bit of it was recorded live over three days in May 2015. Not only is it remarkable that the musicians still sound this good, but the music itself doesn’t sound a minute older than it did in 1983, and that’s a testament to a rare youthful quality among veterans.
The trio, featuring drummer Brian Viglione and several guests, cut the early sessions in Brooklyn with producer Martin Bisi. Much of the understated, yet vigorous drumming from Viglione, who replaced disgruntled original member Victor DeLorenzo in 2013, is a less-is-more style that serves the vintage scraps Gano salvaged from a trove of lost tapes. (Viglione informed his Facebook followers that he quit the band in December 2015 “for professional reasons.”)
Gano opened many of his old ideas to co-writers, including Better Than Ezra’s Kevin Griffin and Barenaked Ladies’s Kevin Hearn, on several songs like “Issues.” Gano, trademark snark intact, cleverly rhymes that title with “tissues.” And yet there are moments of tenderness: “You give it all or else you haven’t tried,” Gano demands on “What You Really Mean,” a song his sister Cynthia Gayneau wrote. “You don’t play halfway.”
What’s most striking about We Can Do Anything is how fitting it would sound on anything from the early catalog. More importantly, this overdue collection of pithy, three-minute tales proves longevity can crush acrimony and rekindle the Femmes’s true spark: a caustic punk twist on dark campfire singalongs.
“If your life unravels, make a plan that travels,” Gano sings, almost warns, on “Traveling Solves Everything,” his road map to escaping the confines of a rut. And who would know better? During all those years his band went its separate ways, internal lawsuits and rivalries threatened hope for a proper reunion. But they hit their stride again, with the hearts of the healed, and rediscovered their deft word-smithing and ironic interpretations. Malaise prevails, but damn, it’s catchier than it’s been in 30 years.
Are they still angsty and irritable? Sure. But they’ve grown more agreeable with age. There’s that optimistic album title, and even an accordion spices up the joint. Cynicism has run its course for Violent Femmes, and in this case it pays to play nice again.
