REVIEW: Violent Femmes, Freak Magnet (Beyond)
- Don Share
Their first new album since 1994's bewildering New Times and last year's live Viva Wisconsin, Freak Magnet finds the Violent Femmes as bouncily crisp as ever, which means since their justly revered 1983 debut. Original members Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie are joined again by new drummer, Guy Hoffman, once of the BoDeans, and again we are treated to a combination of familiar sounds and hit-or-miss experiments, a combination of, er, high and low points.
The album kicks off with "Hollywood Is High," one of several instantly likeable and energetic electric tunes; its ambivalence is characteristic: "And I don't wanna have fun / Fun always lets me down / And I don't wanna stay young / And always be just hangin' round." The Femmes aren't all that young anymore, of course, and they and their fans have likely felt let down since the band's early, freshly twisted days. Still, as the title tune puts it, "Some magnets attract / Some magnets repel / Some magnets say: hey, hey what the hell / I'll take it both ways." If I quote a lot of lyrics, it's because Gano is memorably quotable - even when he's being silly, he's not just trying to be fun.
"Sleepwalker," for instance, the album's single, says it all: "Am I too late / Am I too far estranged... / Is the singer / singing badly / Or is he trying to sing the wrong song?" Well, on balance, the "right" songs are either those that crackle with added electric guitar-punch, but don't suffer from mere punk-predictability - as does "All I Want," which is merely rote, and "Mosh Pit," which is something only a Bart Simpson would love ("What's for breakfast / What's for lunch / What's for dinner / Captain Crunch!") - or the ones that are freshly experimental. "New Generation," for instance, sounds like a toss-off, yet it's as succinct and funny as the Ramones, a kind of "My Generation" in reverse; similarly exhilirating is "In the Dark," which combines the punning punk-ness of "He has more women than you'll ever know / Hey daddy hey daddy hi daddy ho" with a Martin Denny-esque snake-charming flute solo. As for the experiments, "Forbidden" is as strange and wonderful as Gano gets: "Come with us and play! / See, we have breasts as women." "I Danced" is quirky and vivid. "Rejoice and be Happy" is an actual hymn, sped up and kicked in the seat of its robes.. and why not? "We are the salt of the earth / If we're not salty / What are we worth?" A Brian Ritchie bass solo worthy of John Entwhistle, to boot. "Happiness Is" is Zen-like in its repetitions, and also positively illuminating: "Happiness is a word for amateurs."
But "I'm Bad" is, indeed bad - listless, perhaps unintentionally unsatisfying. "At Your Feet" is just a love song. And, of the failed experiments, the closing "A Story" is a tedious epic about a "monster of the interstate ... / Who eats teenagers." It ends with Gano's claim that "The moral of this story / Is clear for all to see / And if clearly all can see / Then it isn't clear to me." Typically ambivalent from beginning to end, Freak Magnet is a handful of tunes shy of being a Femmes masterwork, but it nicely bookends the band's long and in fact distinguished career.
