ALBUM REVIEW : *** 1/2 MARY’S DANISH “Circa”<i> Morgan Creek</i>

Mary’s Danish did it backwards: It’s a band’s debut album that’s supposed to carry a lifetime of experiences and insights, leaving nothing for the follow-up. But this successor to the Los Angeles band’s promising “There Goes the Wondertruck” sounds as if it contains two or three lifetimes, portraying emotional and physical struggles in a variety of evocative musical and lyrical settings: “Don’t Beat Me Up” and the closing, elegiac “Cover Your Face” present adult themes handled in adult manners, but with no lack of youthful energy.

The progress and maturity call to mind X, the band to which the Danish is most often compared. Musically, though, X’s influence is found only in the pumping “Venus Loves Leonard.” On the whole, the music shifts between richly evocative and aggressively cathartic--sometimes funky, sometimes punky, once or twice country-tinged, but all seemingly cut from the same cloth.

And in the lyrics of singers Julie Ritter and Gretchen Seager, desperation never turns to defeat; there’s always a sense of fighting resolve and will. There’s also a playful side in the George Clinton-meets-Pere-Ubu art-funk “These Are All the Shapes Nevada Could Have Been.” It’s a combination that--along with the female perspective--sets the Danish apart from other leaders of L.A.’s alternative rock scene and could launch them to national status.

Rating is based on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic).