This is without a doubt one of my favorite records of all time. I discovered the Femmes when I was in high school. While everyone else was listening to KoRn and Limp Bizkit, I was listening to the Femmes, The Dead Milkmen, and the Smithereens. This album was available as a cassette from the local library and I immediately fell in love. I was uninterested in the popular clique and was more or less wrapped up in my own world. This record spoke to me, not only as a Christian, but also as someone who wasn\u2019t very pleased with the outside world.<\/p>\n
The story goes that frontman\/guitarist\/songwriter Gordon Gano had written the majority of these songs during the writing frenzy that created the songs on their landmark self-titled debut. But bassist Brian Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo, both atheists, did not want to perform these Christianity-related songs on their debut album. However, they compromised and allowed Gano to include them on their sophomore record.<\/p>\n
The first track, \u201cCountry Death Song,\u201d is, simply put, one of the greatest songs of the whole \u201880s alternative rock era. Written by Gano about an old newspaper article he had read, the song is about a farmer who\u2019s dealing with what to do with himself. What he has done is he has thrown his daughter into a well and now must live with his actions. The narrative of the song is so hauntingly beautiful and so well sung and performed that it boggles the mind! Another song that casts the same spell is \u201cNever Tell,\u201d which at seven minutes is the longest track the band ever put on record. It sounds like one of those great old blues singers weaving a tale and then asking for forgiveness \u2013 it just is amazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Know It\u2019s True But I\u2019m Sorry to Say\u201d is one of the band\u2019s best ballads and has the feel of real, deep emotion. The religious aspects of Gano\u2019s songwriting comes through the most on \u201cJesus Walking On The Water,\u201d which sounds like something that one would find in a church hymnal, as well as the title track and on \u201cIt\u2019s Gonna Rain,\u201d which is literally about Noah and his ark.<\/p>\n
The only negative aspect of this record is the free-form jazz improvisation section of \u201cBlack Girls,\u201d which kills the entire song. If you take that aspect away from the record, it\u2019s still great and if you ask me, it is THE BEST record the Femmes ever made. They would spend the rest of their career trying to match the heights of the first two records but never quite getting there. If you\u2019re looking for a great Christian related record without all the overt preachiness, then this is definitely the place to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6239],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-44042","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-violent-femmes","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44042"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44042"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}