Reflecting Pool: Violent Femmes – The Blind Leading The Naked

The 3rd Femmes record. Bigger production. Better distribution. So, what happened?

Violent Femmes – The Blind Leading the Naked – 1986 (iTunes – Amazon)

I really couldn’t wait for this album to come out. I think I got it at Tower THAT day. And then I think I listened to it once, taped the songs I liked and never listened to it again.
Why?
What happened?
First off, the Femmes have a much larger worldview this time. They are almost peaceniks from the sound of the opening tracks.
While “Old Mother Reagan” has the edgy, aggressiveness that I’ve come to expect, it clocks in at less than a half minute and goes right into the almost pedantic but still rousing “No Killing”, which suffers from 80s overextension.
The gospel track, “Faith” is one of my favorite songs from the era. But the production isn’t quite right. I’m not sure about the horns, the sax, the harmonicas, the jangly piano…the horns of dilemma are given too much room to breath and it doesn’t quite sit right. “Breakin’ Hearts” sounds like it could’ve dropped off “Greatest Hits of the Appalachians” but, it, too, is catchy and fun piffle. And abutted up against the pop-punky “Special” it’s a neat one-two punch.
But that production. It’s just too dry. It’s like early Talking Heads records…..wait! That’s right. This was produced by Jerry Harrison! No wonder! The early Heads records always left me cold, like they were recorded in a vacuum. The first two Femmes records are wet, dank, bloody and dangerous.
Not here. While this is a much more fun and catchy record than the last, it’s production could leave you cold.
It also has the honor of debuting the songwriting stylings of Brian Richie & Victor DeLorezo. If you never have to hear the roots rock “Love and Me Makes Three” count yourself lucky. Then again, “In the Morning of the Morning, I hear Mourning of the deepest kind” are some of the dumbest lyrics Gano has written and that song, Candlelight Song, closes side one.
“My doll is dead”, indeed.

Side Two kicks in with one of my favorite Gano songs ever, “I Held Her in My Arms”. Lyrically, it’s frustrated and confused and just everything you would expect from this songwriter. The flat production sounds like, well, the way the rest of the album sounds. Like the band is nowhere near the singer or the main band. The Femmes actually come across like they’re part of a backing band and the producer is more interested in that backing band than the leads. And every song suffers for it.
The cover of Children of the Revolution feels like someone decided they needed a hit single and this was their choice? I think their version of Eep-Opp-Ork-A-A from the Jetsons a few years later has more integrity.
The feel good, stoop sitting in the summer, “Good Friend” wears out its welcome 40 seconds before it ends and “Heartache” just sounds like a leftover at this point.
The Blind Leading the Naked sounds like a band that’s trying to hard to be relevant. Coming after two of the most relevant and powerful albums of the decade this is such a disappointment.

Grade B-
A Side: Old Mother Reagan, Faith, I Held Her in my Arms
BlindSide: No Killing, Breakin’ Hearts
DownSide: Love and Me Make Three, Two People