E-Mail This Article to a Friend Punk idols Stiff Little Fingers give the middle one to pre-fab pop BY MIKE MILIARD

Stiff Little Fingers frontman Jake Burns is taken aback at how "fantastically well" his band’s fall tour has been going. Reached in San Diego, he confesses that "audiences have been so great that we’ve been joking, ‘Are we sure they haven’t turned up thinking Justin Timberlake is on?’ "

Not bloody likely. Especially when you consider that the title track of SLF’s long-awaited new release, Guitar and Drum (Kung Fu), is a good-natured dig at pre-fab pop treacle — and a paean to the old-fashioned tools of the rock-and-roll trade. "It’s actually a reaction to [British American Idol precursor] Pop Idol," Burns says. "For which I am dreadfully sorry and would like to apologize to the American people."

As an act of contrition, the band, who play this Saturday at the Paradise, make good on the record’s title. "We became quite Stalinist about it and said we weren’t going to have anything on it that wasn’t a guitar, or a drum, or our voices. In the past, we’ve hired in keyboard players and horn sections and that sort of thing. But this time around, we said, ‘If we don’t sing it or play it, it’s not going on the record.’ "

The result is a set of songs as vital and visceral as anything SLF have done since they came roaring out of the barbed wire and bomb craters of Belfast in 1979 with their excoriating debut, Inflammable Material. The past quarter-century has seen Burns relocate to Newcastle, and he’s the sole original member left in the band. (The current line-up includes ex-Jam bassist Bruce Foxton, guitarist Ian McCallum, and drummer Steve Grantley.) But the passing of years has neither dulled his keen edge nor diluted his sense of social justice. Consider "Still Burning," a seething salvo of slashing chords and crashing fills, an anthem of righteous rage. Burns argues, "Just because we’re that much older, what makes you think that we’re not allowed to be angry?"

And though loud-and-fast rules Guitar and Drum, its simple instrumentation doesn’t always translate into homogeneity. The folk-rock harmonies and chiming guitars of "Dead Man Walking" reminded me of the Byrds. But Burns says SLF were actually chasing a different California dream. After hearing an advance copy of the record, J.J. Burnel of the Stranglers phoned Burns and asked, "When did you become the Mamas and Papas, then?" "I love the Byrds, but J.J. got it spot-on," says Burns. "We were actually aiming for the Mamas and the Papas. But which of us was going to take the female voice?"

Lest you think they’ve gone soft, listen to their diesel-greasy rant "Empty Sky." It almost sounds like — nah, it couldn’t be. "It does indeed sound like Motörhead," Burns confesses with a laugh. "That was a song that Steve, our drummer, wrote pretty much on his own. When he brought it to me, he had sung it in a very straight-ahead way, and I said, ‘Hey look, do you mind if I go back to the ol’ Jake Burns growl on this?’ He said, ‘Depends. How far over the top are you gonna go?’ I said, ‘I kinda wanna go halfway down the other side of the hill, really.’ I sound more like Lemmy than Lemmy does!"

But it’s a different rock icon who looms largest over the record. In the beginning, Stiff Little Fingers were referred to as the "Irish Clash." And Burns’s "Strummerville" is a rousing, dry-eyed tribute to the late Joe Strummer. With a clangorous outro that’s a pastiche of "Clash City Rockers," it’s an energetic encomium to a man who played "rock and roll as it should be done." "I got a lot of requests to pay tribute to Joe in one way or another. And I thought, well really, the best way I can do this is write a song, ’cause that’s what the guy inspired me to do. I just hoped that it wouldn’t come off too cheesy. It is a tricky thing to do. You’re trying so hard to avoid all the clichés. That’s really all it was. It was an affectionate nod to a hero."

Strummer went way too soon. Burns has no such plans. But like his friend and mentor, he aims to keep at it until he can’t anymore. Stiff Little Fingers’ 1987 reunion was envisioned as a four-gig lark, a way to get the broke band members home for the holidays for free. Seventeen years later, they’re still at it. "Now," says Burns, "the plan is to keep going until, eventually, my bones give out and I fall over."

Stiff Little Fingers play this Saturday, August 21, at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call (617) 423-NEXT.