Violent Femmes -- Add It Up (1981-1993)

The Violent Femmes are an alternative/folk rock band that started in 1981 and are still together today. This is a compilation album chronicalizing their music from their beginnings until their original drummer Victor DeLorenzo left to pursue a solo career. Even if you don't recognize the name of the group, most people have heard at least one of their songs as a couple of them are very famous and used all over the place. The most famous is probably their hit "Blister In The Sun". The lead singer also has a very recognizable voice which isn't usually mistaken for anyone else. This compliation was one of the groups biggest selling records, and it has most of their big hits as well as a couple of song which had been unreleased until this album came out, such as the title song "Add It Up". It was actually the song Add It Up which got me to finally seek out some of the band's other music.

This is actually quite a decent album. It has a lot of cool songs of which I had already known about and some that I hadn't previously which I really enjoy. The song Kiss Off has become one of my favorites off of the album. The Violent Femmes suffer the same thing as They Might Be Giants and other bands in that if you don't like the lead singer's voice you won't be listening to any of their stuff. But if you can get passed his voice or even find you like it then you'll like this group. Now ususally I'm not a fan of Best of Albums and will usually not pick them up but this one I ended up doing so and it's actually pretty decent and makes me want to check out their other stuff. This is a really good collection of songs, but it's really an album per se, and so it doesn't really flow well between songs, that's pretty much my only qualm with this album. So as such I'm giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars, and will probably end up getting some of their actual albums.