Outer limitless

The Drags, Albuquerque's kings of a burgeoning retro-futurist teen-exploitation revival, cut a deliriously chaotic cover of Bill Riley and His Little Green Men's "Flying Saucers Rock 'N Roll" last year. Taking the same song's message somewhat more literally, Supernova claim to be from the planet Cynot 3 and play '90s punk rock with an eye for world domination -- or at least stealing all our tinfoil. What the two have in common is a bare-bones economy and the hope of wresting rock from the realm of serious intentions -- maybe it's just me, but I'm head-sick of serious intentions -- and back to a simple, raucous celebration, the "Looney Tune fountain of youth" whose return Lester Bangs once foretold.

"Big Beat! Big Sound! Big Sensation!" screams the rear jacket cover of the Drags' eight-song mini-album Dragsploitation . . . Now! (Estrus). Scream queen Lorca Wood's bass rolls in like a foghorn off the bay at midnight; her shrill, bloodcurdling shrieks cap the album's two reverb-drenched instrumentals like gunshots. There's a crinkly snare drum smack in the background, but the main engine is C.J. Strendal's amphetamine-nervous, chopping rhythm guitar -- a dry, stabbing tone that's usually reserved for the surf/hot-rod/spy instrumentals Estrus specializes in but that here gets pressed into service as a fretboard-splintering low-fi turmoil, as unrelenting as it is frugal.

The plot reads like the best teen-transgression farces, only without the sellout ending where the kids get locked up and apologize in a veil of tears. This time, they're out of control and taking no prisoners. "Teenage Invasion" (a slightly less implausible rewrite of the Misfits' "Teenagers from Mars") sets the tone with airborne adolescent hoodlums taking over the world shouting "Squares beware!" "Mr. Undertaker" has a hoodlum dodging the Reaper, with Strendal's effusive sneer stopping just short of bloody murder: "I know you said that you'd wait for my time/But I know you'd take me now if you could -- waaauuugh!" And predictably, once he's invaded earth, looked death straight in the eye, and proclaimed his independence, the only thing standing in this punk's way is a dangerous chick on the wrong side of the law: on "My Girlfriend's in the F.B.I.," the young thug warily eyes his crime-fightin' gal, afraid he's gonna be her next bust.

If Sesame Street had a house punk band, it would be Supernova. On their Ages 3 and Up (Amphetamine Reptile/Atlantic), the trio exploit the Day-Glo approach of Green Day and company with an exuberant banality that punk's new expansive all-ages community can relate to wholeheartedly. The story goes like this -- three art students on a tinfoil-mining planet narrowly escape the destruction of their solar system in a homemade spaceship, then crash-land on Earth, start a band to transmit secret messages direct to our subconscious, and marvel like Mork at all of our junky, ephemeral wonders.

With a music based on rock and roll's lowest common denominator, the power chord, why shouldn't the subject matter follow suit? Plus, it's near impossible to dispute the transcendent beauty of a line like "Being with you's like math class/And I always get an F." Supernova barely bother to deviate from formula, keeping up a steady barrage of tight, hyperactive melodies and vocals that suggest Jello Biafra, Johnny Rotten, Richard Hell, and early Talking Heads will all get airplay well into the next galaxy. A string of two-minute paeans to Oreo cookies, Mentos, vitamins, fistfights over chewing gum, winter coats, and the ecstasies of drooling (mind you, those are the songs that are actually about something), 3 Ages and Up wouldn't be nearly so seductive if, like the Ramones' debut album, it didn't rock from beginning to end. You can't help feeling that the world deserves Supernova and their compulsive bright-shiny-object syndrome, dressing in silver jumpsuits and shaving their heads in cookie-cutter patterns. "Maybe we just missed the ferry that takes you on to the seventh grade," says bassist Art (apparently there are no last names in outer space) in the band's propaganda. Until punk rock admits it missed the same boat, I'm casting my tinfoil in with the aliens.

Supernova play an afternoon all-ages show with Gaunt at T.T. the Bear's Place next Saturday, February 17.