Violent Femmes Announce New Album Hotel Last Resort, Share Tom Verlaine-Featuring Title Track

Milwaukee folk punk legends Violent Femmes have announced that they’ll be relasing their 10th studio album on July 26. Titled Hotel Last Resort, the record follows 2016’s We Can Do Anything, which saw the band return for their first album in 16 years. Hotel Last Resort features covers of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America and Greek band Pyx Lax’s “I’m Not Gonna Cry,” which frontman Gordon Gano translated into English himself, as well as appearances from professional skateboarder Stefan Janoski on “I’m Not Gonna Cry” and Television frontman Tom Verlaine on the title track.

“I think it’s probably the best one we’ve made since Hallowed Ground,” says bassist Brian Ritchie. “It’s just a very focused album, the songs all hold together. It’s a classic album, in the sense that people should actually sit down and listen to the whole thing.”

The Verlaine-featuring track has been shared today alongside the announcement. As the story goes, Ritchie reached out to Verlaine about working on the song and heard back almost instantly. “We didn’t really give him much instruction,” Ritchie says, “but he did exactly what we hoped he’d do. He clearly has an affinity for the song. He must’ve really clued in on the lyrics and he really interpreted them with a guitar.”

“One of the greatest thrills of a long recording career is getting Tom Verlaine to play on one of our songs,” continues Gano. “It’s just amazing to hear that sound.”

Read the tracklist, listen to “Hotel Last Resort,” and watch Violent Femmes KEXP in-studio performance from 2017 below.