FEMMES’ BITTER CHILL

“THE BLIND LEADING THE NAKED.” The Violent Femmes. Slash. The third album from the Milwaukee-based Femmes has strong strains of country, bluegrass and sax-driven, rave-up rock ‘n’ roll, but the dominant beat is the brash and abrasive sound of the best late-’70s punk and new wave records. Like most singer/songwriters in that Velvet Underground-cum-Sex Pistols tradition, Gordon Gano would seem to present himself as a certifiable neurotic and paranoid romantic. But he’s also a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, which makes for some determinedly rockin’ religious music the likes of which you’ve assuredly never heard before.

“Blind” is a less Gothic and more direct and up-tempo LP than the Femmes’ last, and though Talking Head Jerry Harrison has taken over at the board, an on-target remake of T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution” is the only number that sounds particularly “produced.” Gano employs a roaring straightforwardness on everything from the Christian call-and-response of the barroom blues romp “Faith” to hard-driven attacks on leaders both religious and political.

That a true believer can still be left-leaning and get mad at his girlfriend may come as the real Good News to some. Yet the bitterness casts a chill through even the happier moments of the record. After all, even obvious mentor Lou Reed can wax warm now and again, but Femmes fans are less likely to come away enthused with the joy of the Lord than disturbed by the darkness of the world. That dichotomy isn’t enough to mark Gano as a rock ‘n’ roll heretic, but it does make him the most intriguingly confusing singer of “sacred” songs this side of Elvis--Prince notwithstanding.