Soundtracks for the Age of Irony : *** 1/2 B-52’s; “Good Stuff”, <i> Reprise</i> : ** 1/2, DEEE-LITE; “Infinity Within”, <i> Elektra</i>

Until the B-52’s began dropping their peace-love-and-kitsch bomblets on the culture in the late ‘70s--just in time to put a multicolored cap on the decade of Rock Earnestness--the novelty song was pretty much the province of the occasional failed comedian or slumming ex-Beatle.

What distinguished this Georgia outfit was how it didn’t set itself above its own jokes--instead embracing the irony of the goofy duds and silly, sunbaked calls-and-responses to the point that it didn’t seem quite right to call it ironic. By the time of their fourth album or so, the B-52’s took themselves seriously enough to seem like full-blooded hippies--but not so seriously that it wasn’t still OK to laugh.

It’s hard to gauge how much of the current Age of Irony the B-52’s can claim (or deny) responsibility for, but it’s a lot. The ‘70s-cum-21st-Century dance hybrid Deee-Lite, for one--which does for the techno-house generation what the B-52’s did for new wave--almost certainly wouldn’t exist otherwise, nor would a lot of lesser, smirkier practitioners of pop reappropriation.

But the Georgia crew is still in a private Idaho all by itself. The namesake beehive hairdos are long gone, but the new album is among the B’s’ best--and who expected to be saying that in 1992?

“Good Stuff” is a sequel in every significant way to “Cosmic Thing,” the B-52’s’ delightful comeback album of three years ago--with the same two expert producers (Nile Rodgers and Don Was) divvying up the tracks and the same mixture of serious silliness and giddy sensuousness. It’s another quasi-New Age tapestry done up with Day-Glo paint and spangles.

And--from the group for which it’s always the Summer of Love--it’s a nearly perfect summer album, the ideal companion for public beach, private clinch, auto trip or astral projection.

Frankly, the tunes that’ll strike most listeners as the most quintessentially ‘52’s--”Hot Pants Explosion,” the UFO saga “Is That You Mo-Dean?” and the sassy opener “Tell It Like It T-I-Is”--are the ones that will probably wear the quickest here.

Paradoxically enough, the B-52’s these days are at their most fun at their most serious, leaving the camp odes behind to tromp their way through gardens and star fields--sensualists in the truest sense of the term, all innuendoes aside.

“Revolution Earth” is this album’s “Roam,” an excursion into pure romanticism, with a typically lovely, soaring vocal by Kate Pierson evoking the aphrodisiac qualities of nighttime gravity. You get a simpler, surlier version of the same sentiment in the title track, and “Vision of a Kiss” provides an irresistible addition to the annals of innocent crush songs.

These tracks are all played completely, life-affirmingly straight, yet the band never seems sober exactly--not in “Dreamland,” an oddly modulated tribute to the dear departed, or even in “Bad Influence,” the closing pro-tolerance anthem, which is as close as the B-52’s come to delineating their well-known politics.

Deee-Lite has no such compunctions about getting to the topical nitty-gritty, weighing down its second album with the spoonful-of-sugar dance lectures “Vote Baby Vote,” “I Had a Dream I Was Falling Through a Hole in the Ozone Layer” and “Rubber Lover.” Not that frothy music and heavy messages aren’t ever meant to mix, but these missives sound like public service announcements set to a click track.

The ironic humorlessness follows over even to some of the ‘70s-soul-style ballads, and the trio hasn’t come up with a single anywhere near as magical as its hit “Groove Is in the Heart.” But the album has enough of a respectable pedigree (with funksters like Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell sitting in) and a hard-to-knock ambient house groove to entrench Deee-Lite as an instant disco-culture institution.

Both these groups deal with the post-fragmentation era by putting a few pieces of Humpty Dumpty back together again to create their own pop-culture Frankenstein monsters. Deee-Lite’s disposable pop is destined for a short but tasty shelf life; the B-52’s’ latest, though, ought to be good for thawing next summer, and the one after.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).