Violent Femmes still deliver with a sneer

Aging band has crowd in palm of its hand from start

VIOLENT FEMMES Claridge Homes Stage Reviewed Sunday

Reunions — especially with important people from our younger days — can be very disappointing. Everyone’s a little bit saggier, a little pudgier — a little less interesting than nostalgia or memory serves.

Thankfully, Bluesfest’s reunion tour performance of Violent Femmes was anything but — which is somewhat surprising for an aging band whose seminal ’80s albums were all about disaffected youth and rebellion.

Violent Femmes have been off-and-on-again in the 31 years since their self-titled debut. But that album’s single, Blister in the Sun, remains an eternal college anthem. And, on the Claridge Homes Stage on Sunday night, the Milwaukee rockers proved they can still deliver it with their signature sneering verve. It was their opening number and, with it, they already had the crowd — hips shaking and singing along — in the palm of their hands.

Original singer-guitarist Gordon Gano and bassist Brian Ritchie were in vintage form. The postpunk trio’s original drummer, Victor DeLorenzo, has been replaced by Brian Viglione — who didn’t miss a beat. His driving rhythms — coupled with Ritchie’s dominant acoustic bass — practically dared the crowd not to dance.

Gano also played the banjo and violin in a rollicking set that included Country Death Song, Gone Daddy Gone, Freak Magnet and Add it Up.

Backed by an occasional brass section and a secondary percussionist, this was more than the stripped-down acoustic-punk of the Femmes’ first album, which they played track for track. The supporting cast added new layers of depth behind Gano’s staccato vocals and Peter Pan persona.

In the closing number, when Gano asked “do you like American music?” in the Femmes’ classic romp American Music, the swaying, singalong enthusiasm in the crowd served as his answer. Ottawa likes American music ... baby. Or at least the Violent Femmes’ eternally youthful brand of it.

Earlier, when Gano sang “good feeling, won’t you stay with me a little longer?” he might as well have been foreshadowing the crowd’s feeling when the show finally had to come to an end.

Before the Femmes graced the stage, the Drive-By Truckers served a musical slice of modern Americana pie. The Alabamaborn, Athens, Ga.-based alt-country rockers may look like hipster hillbillies (their drummer could be in a ZZ Top cover band), but they are no throwbacks. Delivering a fusion of blues, country and southern rock, their songs offered a meditation on the modern American South.

The swaggering, veteran group played a healthy mix of songs from their new album, English Oceans, and older fan favourites.

Led by co-founders Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, who alternated as lead singers, the group’s lyrical landscape was chockfull of interesting characters, from hard-luck blue-collar workers and evangelical politicians to inept bosses and harderluck wives.

Suffice it to say, the Truckers left behind a crowd of contented fans.