Detailed item info | Track listing | 1. Hollywood Is High
2. Freak Magnet
3. Sleepwalkin'
4. All I Want
5. New Generation
6. In the Dark
7. Rejoice and Be Happy
8. Mosh Pit
9. Forbidden
10. When You Died
11. At Your Feet
12. I Danced
13. I'm Bad
14. Happiness Is
15. Story, A - (featuring Pierre Henry)
16. Rejoice and Be Happy - (live, bonus track)
17. Freak Magnet - (live, bonus track)
18. Positively 4th Street - (live, bonus track)
| | Details | | Contributing artists: | Pierre Henry | | Distributor: | Sony Music Distribution ( | | Recording type: | Studio | | Recording mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
| | Album notes | The Violent Femmes: Brian Ritchie (vocals, guitar, shakuhachi, keyboards, bass, percussion); Gordon Gano (vocals, guitar); Guy Hoffman (vocals, drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Pierre Henry.
Producers: Violent Femmes, Warren Bruleigh, Pierre Henry, Tom Grimley.
Engineers include: Martin Brass, Bil Emmons, Warren Bruleigh.
The Violent Femmes: Brian Ritchie (vocals, guitar, shakuhachi, keyboards, bass instrument, percussion); Gordon Gano (vocals, guitar); Guy Hoffman (vocals, drums, percussion).
Despite approaching middle age, the Violent Femmes--and in particular, frontman Gordon Gano--remain rock's premier poets of pissed-off, resentful adolescence, which is both their strength--consistency--and their weakness--the pose now seems more like, well, a pose rather than a heartfelt expression. Fortunately, Gano is by now such a pro songwriter that he can fake pretentious teen angst quite convincingly, and his uniquely choked vocal style--he sounds alternately like Buddy Holly, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, and David Byrne--hasn't aged a bit. The band's sound remains, as before, a mix of acoustic punk and rockabilly, and it's heard to particularly good advantage here on the very funny title song, "Hollywood Is High," and the anthemic "Mosh Pit." In a nice historic touch, the Femmes also pay homage to their Minnesota ancestors the Trashmen on the "Surfin' Bird"-derived "New Generation" (co-credited, if you can believe it, to avant-garde jazzman Albert Ayler), an obscure oldie whose comic dementia is obviously of a piece with the Femmes' general esthetic.
| | Editorial reviews | 3 stars out of 5 - ...retains all the energy and lyrical brilliance of their earlier work, only with a jagged more guitar-led sound. The songs here are witty...and even creepy....A band on form in a state of rich, droll unpleasant maturity.
Q (03/01/2000)
...Aside from a few cool countrified numbers this kicks along with the scratchy, punkish intent of old, Gordon Gano's vocal a blend of Jonathan Richman and a stifled sheep....a little complexity seems to be gurgling back.
Mojo (03/01/2000)
3 out of 5 - ...Remarkably calm, rife with the same breezy, notably non-violent wise-ass humor. Gordon Gano fulfills his duties as jaded, malaise-ridden singer man...while his acoustic strums mesh easily with the skilled bob and bounce of the rhythm section...
Alternative Press (05/01/2000)
...[their] most consistent set of new material since 1989's 3....a big blister of folkcore brilliance that even the sun couldn't eclipse.
CMJ (02/07/2000)
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