VIOLENT FEMMES - VIOLENT FEMMES - 33 1/3 BOOK

Through rare access to the Violent Femmes and their archives, this book investigates the creation of such iconic songs as "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "Add it Up" and "Prove My Love", as well as the album's recording process.

The self-titled debut from Milwaukee post-punk acoustic trio the Violent Femmes is one of those rare albums that seems to have altered the course of popular music and influenced just about everyone who heard it while also managing to operate almost entirely outside of the mainstream. Released in 1983 to little sales or attention, the band was so iconoclastic that it couldn't even engender support from Milwaukee's anti-establishment punk scene. Over the ensuing years, though, Violent Femmes managed to exert itself as an unstoppable cultural force, ascending the college radio charts and spreading through word-of-mouth.

Violent Femmes didn't sound like anything else when it was made, and it still doesn't sound like anything else. The album somehow exists both outside of time and as one of the most evocative and enduring artifacts of the alternative '80's.

• Published    14 May 2026
• Format    Paperback
• Edition    1st
• Pages    136
• ISBN    9798765133514
• Imprint    Bloomsbury Academic
• Dimensions    165 x 121 mm
• Series    33 1/3
• Publisher    Bloomsbury Publishing