Gordon Gano seems like the creepy kid next door who'll go off the deep end any minute, and the more he acts that way, the better the Violent Femmes are. On 3 (actually the band's fourth album), he can sound unhinged when chronicling normal activities like seeing a vaguely familiar person ("Mother of a Girl"), comparing himself to his father ("Father") and asking a friend why she hasn't called back ("Telephone Book"). Merge that with Gano's staccato guitar playing and the clanging beat of bassist Brian Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo, and you've got music ready to implode from its own nervousness. "I can't help being careful," Gano sings in his strangulated adenoidal whine in "World We're Living In," adding, "Something might happen to me."

Unfortunately, something did happen to the Femmes on the way to 3. Their 1983 debut album, Violent Femmes, was a minor masterpiece of pent-up adolescent rage and horniness, but its follow-ups, Hallowed Ground and The Blind Leading the Naked, were confused and gratingly overarranged, crammed with session musicians and with Gano's increasingly religious imagery. Subsequent side projects by Ritchie and Gano (the latter with a neogospel band, Mercy Seat) seemed to signal the premature end to a once promising band.

So just when everyone has given the Violent Femmes up for dead, along comes 3, the title of which seems to indicate that the band now realizes that it functions best as a stripped-down trio. Only two additional musicians are used; the rest is Gano, Ritchie and DeLorenzo making a joyful racket, often on acoustic instruments. "Nightmares" and "Dating Days" recall the spry cockiness of the debut's "Kiss Off." Fueled by a slide guitar that sounds like a derailing train, "Fool in the Full Moon" is the most intense rock & roll the Femmes have ever recorded. The wasted years and mediocre records may have caused irreparable damage to their career, but the best moments on 3 should give anyone second thoughts about breaking the bad news to weird old Gordon. (RS 546)

DAVID BROWNE