The Jesus and Mary Chain's brothers, Jim and William Reid, have what you might call "issues" with rock 'n' roll. Consider, for one, that the pair named their 1995 rarities album The Jesus and Mary Chain Hate Rock 'n' Roll.

Now, there's Munki, a 17-track effort to be released June 9. The album -- their first in three years and their first for the Sub Pop label -- offers up a contradictory set of messages on how the boys feel about their chosen profession.

Munki opens with the shambling glam-rock of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," a gloriously messy tribute to the power of rock that features the lyrics "I love rock 'n' roll/ I love what I'm doing/ I need rock 'n' roll/ gets me where I'm going." It's followed 15 songs later by a re-recording of its trashy antithesis, "I Hate Rock 'n' Roll." There are lyrics that refer to rock legends Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Elvis, a tune called "Supertramp" and a song called "Mo Tucker" that, according to the band, is not an homage to the Velvet Underground drummer of the same name.

With all of that evidence, the album appears to have some sort of rock 'n' roll theme. Not so, according to singer Jim Reid.

"It's not really a theme album," Reid said in his Scottish brogue. "All of our records [are] always about the people that make the record. Our lives are centered around music and rock 'n' roll. 'I Hate Rock 'n' Roll' comes from you and your band becoming obsessed with the lifestyle and what got you there in the first place."

Reid, who -- with no absence of malice -- waxed vitriolic about how much he despises the business side of rock and all the "crap you have to go through," said he wrote "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" to balance out the more anti-rock sentiments that inspired his brother to write "I Hate Rock 'n' Roll."

Regardless of whether or not Reid will cop to it, Munki certainly sounds like an homage to the power of rock, not to mention a return to the distorted power-pop thunder that the band perfected on their classic 1985 debut, Psychocandy, and its follow-up, 1987's Darklands.

"Yeah, I'm a mean motherfucker now/ but I once was cool," snarls Reid on the rumbling, maracas-driven "Birthday," pretty much summing up the band's attitude for this year.

Longtime guitarist Ben Lurie said the "I love rock 'n' roll" feel of the album may have resulted from the way that the group recorded the project. "We just toured a lot and got really good as a band," Lurie said. "And for the first time, we actually rehearsed before we recorded it." Lurie added that the reason so many of the songs (i.e. the Dinosaur Jr-like slacker rock of "Fizzy" and the grind of "Virtually Unreal") sound so "rocky" is that the band played many of them live in the studio.

"Most of our albums are a reaction to what came before them," Reid said. So, in order to counter the stripped-down acoustic sound of 1994's Stoned and Dethroned, Reid said the group went to the other extreme and recorded 69 minutes of churning psychedelic fuzz-pop.

Jim Reid's longtime paramour, Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval, again lends her voice to a Jesus and Mary Chain track. This time, it's the hypnotic, trip-hoppy "Perfume." Sandoval also sang on "Sometimes Always" on Stoned and Dethroned. "She just has a similar taste in music," Reid said of the sweetly glum Sandoval. The brothers' sister, Linda Reid, handles vocals on "Mo Tucker," although Jim Reid said she was not a professional singer "until about five minutes before she recorded that song."

"We always seem to make the wrong record for what's going on," Lurie lamented. He was answering a question about how the band's straight-ahead rock sound fits in with the electronica explosion currently happening in England. "Maybe some day we'll make a rock record when people want to hear a rock record."

Also included on the album are the songs: "Birthday," "Stardust Remedy," "Degenerate," "Crackin' Up," "Commercial," "Never Understood," "I Can't Find the Time for Times," "Man on the Moon," "Black" and "Dream Lover."