Violent Femmes return the favor, covering Gnarls' "Crazy"

Violent Femmes has done unto Gnarls Barkley what Gnarls Barkley did unto them in covering tune “Gone Daddy Gone” on St. Elsewhere. In case you haven’t heard yet (in blog years, this story is 42), the Femmes recently officially released their take on the smash hit “Crazy,” a fitting number for a band that suffered a member-to-member lawsuit last year over a Wendy’s advertisement.

"I might compare it to a calm pond,” the Femmes’ official website quotes Gnarls Barkley's Cee-Lo Green as saying about the cover. “I caught my reflection in it. And I seemed to be momentarily at peace. This track sounds entirely different in the rain, and supports some intriguing lilypads.”

So no, the Violent Femmes aren’t broken up, despite said scuffle and the fact that they haven’t put out an original studio album since 2000’s Freak Magnet. It seems like this cover would have fared about ten times better if it had quicker turnaround time to Gnarls’ song, but maybe it would have just been lost in the reverberations of other artists’ versions at the time...and believe us, there were many.

Violent & Crazy is available as MP3 and on a limited-edition 12” vinyl that features an instrumental-only and, if you can handle a capella warblings of Gordon Gano, a vocals-only version. Stream it here on MySpace.

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