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Originally Posted by noisereductions
y'know what's a band I love that I feel doesn't seem to get the praise (I think) they deserve? The Violent Femmes. I've been super into that band since high school. At the time lumped them with say The Pixies as this sort of 80's starting band that was way ahead of their time. But over the years I feel like nobody really talks about them or anything. I feel like their legacy is forgotten. Maybe relegated to just "Blister In The Sun" I guess. But it's strange to me. That band was really weird, interesting and unique. I don't know. Just me?
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I think they reached peak maturity on
Hallowed Ground, their second album. That's an unheralded classic, for sure. I'm not sure I'd call them "ahead of their time," because their whole shtick is kind of built on perennial adolescence. And sonically, they really just used the tropes of punk, country, new wave and to some extent goth, to make a weird concoction across genres. The Pixies definitely did the same though, on their first two albums. And Young Marble Giants tread similar territory on
Colossal Youth. Flaming Lips did the immature country goth thing several times in the '80s, between
Hear it Is and
Priest Driven Ambulance. But yeah, the Violent Femmes' first two albums are classics of the weirdo '80s "Left of the dial" era. And
Hallowed Ground would be on the list of my favorite albums of the decade.
After that they pretty much went to shit, slowly, over a decade and a half. I remember seeing them pop up on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and wondering what the fuck was going on. They had possibly the worst '90s/2000s out of any of the '80s alt bands, even Dinosaur Jr. put them to shame, and they were basically just a Mascis solo project until '07.
Ween is a better band, and more inventive and influential. But I'd probably pick
Hallwoed Ground over any single Ween album.
That's what I have to say about that, my friend.