In lieu of a long-overdue new studio album -- their last one was six years ago; their last half-decent one nine years ago -- The Violent Femmes offer up this 72-minute live album recorded in their home state of Wisconsin in late 1998. Fourteen of these 20 tracks hail from the first three years of their recording career, fuelling suspicions that the trio's best days are long behind them, but obviously they remain a potent live act with a repertoire that's very much their own. Not many acts could make a crowd happily sing along to a tune about a father who hangs himself in a barn after pushing his "lovely daughter" in a deep, dark well, then make the same crowd go really wild with an ode to the embarrassing aftermath of masturbation. Then again, not many acts have a frontman-songwriter like nasally voiced Gordon Gano, whose fondness for backwoods murder ballads, Baptist spirituals, Willie Dixon, The Velvet Underground and black humour permeates all of his songs. He may be getting a little long in the tooth to be singing Gimme The Car, an early B-side about a teen whose lust turns into psychosis, but the beautiful, VU-inspired ballads Good Feeling and the deep, anguished blues of Confessions are songs for the ages, while American Music is not only a joyous strum 'n' shuffle, but also the Femmes' feel-good manifesto.

Track Listing 1.Prove My Love
  02.I'm Nothing
  03.Country Death Song
  04.Blister In The Sun
  05.Gimmie The Car
  06.Don't Talk About My Music
  07.Confessions
  08.Hallowed Ground
  09.Life Is An Adventure
  10.Old Mother Reagan
  11.Ugly
  12.Good Feeling
  13.Dahmer Is Dead
  14.American Music
  15.Special
  16.Sweet Words Of Angels
  17.Black Girls
  18.Gone Daddy Gone
  19.Add It Up
  20.Kiss Off