Wiki
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Release Date
April 1983
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Length
10 tracks
Violent Femmes is the debut album by Violent Femmes. Mostly recorded in July 1982, the album was released by Slash Records on vinyl and on cassette in April 1983, and on CD in 1987 with two extra tracks "Ugly" and "Gimme the Car". In 2002, Rhino Records remastered the album, filled out the disc's length with demos, and added another disc of live tracks and a radio interview for a 20th anniversary special edition, with liner notes by Michael Azerrad. Violent Femmes is the band's most successful album to date and went platinum eight years after its release. Slant Magazine listed the album at #21 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980's". Most of the songs on the album were written when the songwriter, Gordon Gano, was still in high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Violent Femmes peaked at #171 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart.
J. D. Considine in a 23 June 1983 review in Rolling Stone felt that the debut was precocious yet dynamic, with a good balance between Gano's direct lyrics and the full sound of the music. Both Robert Christgau in an undated Consumer Guide Review and Steve Huey in an AllMusic retrospective, compared the album and singer Gordon Gano with Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers; a comparison which Gano was sick of by May 1983, as he was trying to sound like Steve Wynn.
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