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Mar 1, 2016Much of We Can Do Anything, their first album since 2000 and following on from last year’s Happy New Year EP, is a breezy return to what they do best: acoustic folk-punk with ragged edges, held together by Gano’s ear for a ringing melody and delivered like a peculiarly skittish Lou Reed.
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UncutMar 1, 2016Everything feels remarkably fresh and unforced. [Apr 2016, p.68]
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Mar 7, 2016A sprightly ten-song set which could easily stand up to anything released in the ‘80s.
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Mar 2, 2016Through a well suited use of room mics, live tracking and the odd vocal take from Gano’s demos making the cut, Jeff Hamilton and the band have successfully fuelled We Can Do Anything with the scruffy-but-vibrant spontaneity that made all their earlier records the much loved works they are.
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Mar 25, 2016Cut down to a mini-album, We Can Do Anything would have been better worth the wait.
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Mar 16, 2016They still sound as brilliantly odd as their seminal self-titled debut.
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Mar 7, 2016Roughly half of the album cleaves fabulously to this back-to-basics template, with songs such as What You Really Mean drawing out the doo-wop sadness in Gano’s songcraft. The rest is what you might call “touring” Femmes.
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Q MagazineMar 1, 2016On this first album in 16 years, return unspoilt, showcasing Gano's helter-skelter take on familiarly rootsy targets such as Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, country and rockabilly. [Apr 2016, p.116]
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Mar 1, 2016Even when things get silly on We Can Do Anything, the silliness blows on by, headed toward a bit of revved-up folk or unexpected introspection, and those twists are what makes the album worth hearing.
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Mar 4, 2016The band’s ninth studio effort ebbs and flows, but in the end, it has enough going for it to merit its existence, which is more than a lot of bands can say about their second-stands.
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Mar 4, 2016Too often, solid tracks like “Foothills”--never mind its ridiculous and hilarious rhymes like “I’ll take lunch with my coworkers / But after work I just go berzerkers”--are lost among the album’s wackier, ambitious forays.
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Mar 3, 2016They're not trying to pull off anything like that any more; instead, they're polishing up the durable façade of their signature sound, while the songwriting that it used to support has crumbled.
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Mar 23, 2016The album repeatedly teases you with glimpses of the unhinged, earnest urgency that made the Violent Femmes semi-famous, and then flips into an annoying faux naive whimsy just as you’re starting to enjoy it.