X GOES BACK TO ITS ROOTS : * * * * <i> Great Balls of Fire</i> * * * <i> Good Vibrations</i> * * <i> Maybe Baby</i> * <i> Running on Empty : </i>

* * * 1/2 “SEE HOW WE ARE.” X. Elektra.

“This bottom rung ain’t no fun at all,” goes a line in the title song of the new X album. Maybe not, but that’s the rung that’s always rung most true for this band, and in returning to that perspective X has regained its songwriting power and musical equilibrium.

X’s last LP, 1985’s “Ain’t Love Grand,” might have overcome either the bitterness of its themes or the uncertainty of its musical direction. But the combination of those two drawbacks seemed potentially terminal. It took drastic action to bust out of the dead-end--mainly, the departure of mainstay guitarist Billy Zoom, who was replaced by Tony Gilkyson and Dave Alvin.

It’s turned out to be short tenure for X’s two-guitar era, since Alvin has cut and run, so to speak (see L.A. Beat, Page 70). His and Gilkyson’s slashing, driving playing is solid and flavorful, but somewhat anonymous--it doesn’t make itself felt the way Zoom’s atomic rockabilly did. Instead of drawing the main lines, these guitarists shade and tint, leaving the focus on the coordinated throb-thump-and-snap of John Doe’s bass and D.J. Bonebrake’s drums, and on the solo and merged voices of Doe and Exene Cervenka.

Those were the hallmarks of the early X’s taut, soaring sound, and in “See How We Are” the L.A. band embraces them like straying believers recovering a fundamental truth. Because they find that it’s still revelatory, still in touch, they deliver it not with blase familiarity but with replenished conviction. It’s that conviction that drives home the album’s vivid sketches of despair and brightens its lighter moments.

The characters in X’s songs might be victims of an unraveling society (the derelict lashing out in anger in “I’m Lost,”) or of crumbling romances (the hero of Alvin’s gorgeous “4th of July,” brooding over the unbridgeable gulf between him and his lover and grasping at the desperate hope that the celebration outside should somehow restore their love), but they’re drawn with enough detail to make them real, and with enough compassion to make a difference.

The music can drive and bounce dizzily, underscoring the whimsical wordplay of Cervenka showcases like “Holiday Story” (“Dreamed you grew a beard and wore a hat / Like a brunette Dr. Eugene Scott”). Her “You” blends gritty street scenes with a swooning romanticism, embodied in the line “I’m stuck to you like flies on glue.” Doe’s big-beat ballad, “When It Rains,” is the richest, most bittersweet cut, and the title song’s alternating folk and rock segments match its shifts from contemplation to rage at the state of things.

As downbeat as things can get, the lift in the melodies and in the glorious howl of Doe and Cervenka’s joined voices offers affirmation. When these post-punk populists rev up a chorus like “Look left and right, left and right--then run like hell,” it’s not just a line to song, it’s words to live by.