E-Mail This Article to a Friend England’s dreamers The Subways gear up for the US BY KEN MICALLEF

Ever actually watch The OC? Me neither. If perfectly coiffed teens baring their cloistered life experiences on a weekly TV soap opera makes you cringe, just check out this description of episode 224, "The Dearly Beloved," posted on The OC’s Web site: "Sandy checks out an alcohol-treatment center before Caleb’s funeral. Seth finds the brochure for the treatment center in Sandy’s desk while looking for a cell-phone charger. Seth assumes it’s for his dad, but Ryan’s pretty sure it’s not."

The show may be insipid, but the ongoing attached series of CD compilations — The OC Mix 1 through, as of last week, 5 (Warner Bros.) — are anything but. OC mixes have given mainstream exposure to an amazing array of underground artists: Spoon, Joseph Arthur, Sufjan Stevens, Super Furry Animals, the Album Leaf, the Futureheads, Matt Pond PA, and, perhaps most famously, Deathcab for Cutie. OC mixes are the A&R cheat sheets of the new millennium. So the appearance of a new British band, the Subways, front and center on Mix 5 is not to be taken lightly. The Subways not only snagged the opening cut with the Slade-meets-Oasis rocker "Rock and Roll Queen," they’ve even appeared on the show. This from a trio who have yet to release a Stateside debut. (They play Great Scott this Saturday.)

In England, however, they’ve already racked up three hit singles. "No Goodbyes," currently in heavy rotation, is B-sided with a cover of the Beatles’ "You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away." Pretty hot stuff for a coed outfit with an average age of 20 blasting locomotive guitar rawk that’s more contempo pop-punk than new-wave nostalgic. Billy Lunn (guitar) and Charlotte Cooper (bass) trade vocals; Billy’s brother Josh drums as Billy and Charlotte trade knowing glances on stage, singing lyrics that sound cribbed from love notes passed back and forth in math class. Lunn even has a mopy song for his nubile girlfriend — "Mary."

"What is the point of art if you are not being truly honest?" he says with all the naïveté of a 20-year-old over the phone from Warner Bros. in London. "You have to be sure that you are crossing boundaries, otherwise it is all just mathematics. You have to be treading new territory with your personality, with your music, with your art. There’s no point in doing a song that’s not completely honest."

The earnest attitude may be a bit much, but Young for Eternity (due for US release in February) has the makings of the best rock debut to come out of Britain since Oasis’s Definitely Maybe. "I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say" opens the disc with a dreamy acoustic plunge into darkness before exhilarating punk power chords blast away the melancholy. This is England’s answer to the Green Day–led punk-pop explosion of the ’90s, just late enough to feel pleasantly nostalgic. Five years of gigging London’s toilet circuit taught the Subways to be taut, but what drives the album are the songs, not the sweat.

"You are really just hearing our everyday lives," Lunn says. "Josh is my brother and Charlotte is the love of my life, so there is no need for me to hide anything. I am totally honest with everything I write."

Young for Eternity’s pace barely gives you time to breathe, from the McCartneyish joviality of "Mary" and the head-knocking title track to the Noel Gallagher–inspired "No Goodbyes" and the rousing "With You." Produced by Ian Broudie (the Zutons, the Coral), it catches a young band hitting an early peak.

"We have this telepathy as a band," Lunn says. "We look at each other and know what the other person’s hand is going to do at that exact moment. We are doing it simultaneously because we are a unit, we are connected."

The Subways | Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Allston | Dec 3 | 617.566.9014