The colour of The Violent Femmes' world is deepest black. And from downhome blues to red raw pop they've never lost that off-colour touch

What do you initially ask a group who can be seen on their newest album sleeve sitting in a typically '50's kitsch-tack hairdressing salon wearing giant, jugged guppy fish while a bearded man wears deer's antlers on his head, bottlefeeding a baby next to an aged couple — he with plank-sized paisley kipper tie, she in lurid pink and red stovepipe hat — who blankly observe the proceedings?

You ask them if they have any jokes about drummers, of course.

"Well, we have two musicians and drummer in our band so obviously, we're open minded enough to have one in there" booms Brian Ritchie, guitarist and bassist of Milwaukee's finest, The Violent Femmes.

"Brian's had experience with drummers, haven't you?" smirks Gordon Gano, singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist. "There's something wrong with most of them mentally, right?"

Brian: "It was a good thing for the first two or three years of the band that Victor (De Lorenzo) didn't use any cymbals, because I've studied this a lot and I attribute the brain damage to constantly hearing those cymbals and I think it goes to their brains and hurts them a lot. Victor didn't use any for a few years so he's better off than most drummers. He's got them now so you'll probably see a pretty steady downfall from now on. He might go preventative and just start using cowbells though."

At this precise moment I'd have loved to turn round to Victor and ask his opinion but unfortunately he wasn't with us in my car as I drove them through the streets of London between soundcheck and hotel reservation. It was in fact the first time I'd interviewed a group while looking at them in a mirror.

Then again, it's probably just right for the Violent Femmes, a weird, ambiguous bunch of hootenannies chock full of black comedy, psychokillers and some of the most libininous songs around. Let's not forget religion, perfect Lou Reed eulogies and a sackful of sneering, whiny, addictive tunes either. In the mirror, I see two American troubadours, a little pasty after another Euro-Rover excursion but still full of good-time spirits. When I turn round to look at them, I see two off-the-wall ex-streetbuskers, singing "Country Death Song", "Black Girls" "Jesus Walking On the Water." Bizarre, you might say.

They were originally discovered playing for spare change in their hometown Milwaukee by Pretender Chrissie Hynde and hit the slightly bigger time as a bastard cross between rustic, hillbilly hoedown and a grimy, urban bar-room band. Folk-blues, jazz, C&W, swamp, stomps, rust-edged rock and roll; if you want to hear it all tied up tight, The Femmes are your men.

Now we have a third album, "The Blind Leading The Naked". Before we troop out to the car, I'm led by a fully-clothed Brian Ritchie into the dressing room for a chat. First, The Femmes aren't the most MIDI-conscious musos in the world. No-one gets out the manuals. For a band who admit to just following their instincts even if it turns out to be a shabby mistake, I simply let them talk about what they want to. Second, Gordon evidently doesn't give a Sigue Sigue Sputnik about instrumentology, so...

"I like the idea of doing a technical interview because I've never done one before. Normally I get asked things like the size of my dick, things like that."

Instead of asking Brian if his dick is bigger than the acoustic double-bass he used to play, I mention the first album. Staying true to the vision of their country's most prestigious gutter-cats, they kept the stark, acoustic backdrops that gave them their pocket money.

"There was a very crude approach to music making on that first album. There were 10 songs, of which eight used the Ernie Ball Earthwood acoustic bass guitar, two using a Peavey electric bass. I think it was half and half a Telecaster and a Martin acoustic guitar. Victor used only a snare drum and a tranceaphone, which is a tom-tom with a metal ashbucket on top (like a dustbin lid... ) of it. Only two songs had a conventional drum set and even then he was playing with brushes. We used xylophone on "Gone Daddy Gone" and piano on "Good Feeling" so as you can see, it was a very minimal approach."

For drummers only: Vic's bass drum was a Scotch marching drum, and very good it was too.

"On our new album, Victor has switched to playing conventional drums for almost the whole album and using sticks for the most part. We treated each song as an individual case, trying not to impose any stylistic approach on the entire album. I guess Victor just decided that sticks would go well in almost every case."

"I'm using an electric bass now on every track which is a Maton apart from one track where the Earthwood acoustic bass and electric play the same part. The Maton's from Australia which we got over there. We've also got an acoustic guitar and two electric guitars from there. It's a fantastic company that's still making great instruments in the tradition of like what Gibson or Epiphone were making probably 30 or 40 years ago, but lost it.

"We went to visit the factory. It's a family-run operation and they really put a lot of care into all the instruments, trying to work on new ideas but still keeping old fashioned craftsmanship involved which is real important, because you get a lot of guitars nowadays that have phenomenal electronics or they look great and have some really innovative finish like 'I'm a space shuttle' but then you can't play it because it feels like a piece of shit when you hold it in your hands. But they made a guitar that feels as comfortable as an old Fender or Gibson and still has modern electronics and can compete soundwise with anything else that's happening now."

With "The Blind Leading The Naked", Talking Heads' keyboard player, Jerry Harrison, has been brought in as producer, bringing a level of expertise The Femmes could never attain. The group aren't even that interested if the truth be known.

"We spent a lot of time on it to make sure it sounded good. Jerry and Dave Vartanian, the engineer, they had a phenomenal amount to do with the sound of the record. They knew a lot of stuff, like certain reverbs to use on the voice or what microphone to use. It was invaluable, but we would painstakingly listen to everything that was going on."

From "trying to make the first album like we were playing in the person's front room, as real life as possible" to the smoother, more uniform approach (as a writer astutely said recently, The Femmes sounded more like a band and less like a force of nature) of the new album, new instruments have been introduced like celestes, marimbas and a stompatron (damn! Never did get round to asking what that was) on the second album "Hallowed Ground", to arabic instruments (the tabla and deff), Fred Frith's homemade instruments and greater use of keyboards (probably Harrison's influence) on the new one. Both on record and live, The Femmes are joined by a loosely knit, brilliantly named ensemble The Horns Of Dilemma who provide the added colour. As for The Femmes themselves, well, their attitude when in concert mode is "always the same: a backyard party" and when locked up in the studio, slightly more attention to detail. But, as Brian says, they're not trying to be John McLaughlin or Dire Straits.

"We use all the FX in the studio that everybody else uses, like harmonisers and digital delays and this ridiculous thing that we use called a, err, an aural exciter, I think. We use the harmoniser sometimes to make the sound a little bit fuller. Live I use a Cry Baby Wah-Wah which is the same thing Hendrix used and it's the same stuff I used when I was 15 years old. I also use a Big Muff, which is a fuzzbox. It's the Electro-Harmonix company of fuzz. I like fuzz better than distortion because you get distortion out of the amplifier but fuzz, even on harmonic series, is an obnoxiously different sound.

"Gordon uses a little Boss distortion unit, or an MXR. I think it's a Boss. Isn't that right, Gordon?"

Gordon unties the bag of crisps from his face and joins the interview.

"Yeah, I think so."

You don't care too much for the state-of-the-art stuff, do you?

Brian: "It doesn't make any difference to me. I don't care how old it is and what it's made out of as long as it sounds the way I want it to. The thing I like about the Wah-Wah compared to most FX units is that it's something you can actually play. It's not like something you just press down and there's a different sound. You can actually manipulate the sound precisely with your foot. It's something that very few pedals can do."

For anybody trying to stoke up a garageband in garageland or just a natural, earthy sound, then The Violent Femmes are great post-punk instigators to follow. Hell, they don't care too much for etiquette or being serious; just as long as everybody's having a good time and dancing loose. That's the moment they're likely to reel out a good murder rap or gospel song to throw you off your step.

"I don't think the instruments really matter" Brian adds later as we near the hotels. "It matters to musicians. I don't think it matters to the public."

You aren't musicians then?

"I'm a musician for sure. But Gordon for example, he doesn't care at all. He can make any guitar sound the same, just like Hendrix."

I push two slinky Femmes out of my Reliant Sports and leave them to find their own way from the kerb.