A Freshly Brood Cup of Cynicism : Pop music: True to form, the Smithereens look at the dark side in ‘Date.’ They’re at the Coach House tonight.

“A Date With the Smithereens”? The title of the veteran rock group’s latest release is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek lift from an old Elvis album: For any dreamy-eyed teen-age girl of the ‘90s, the idea of a night on the town with these guys probably would elicit horrified shrieks rather than coy giggles.

Inside the CD booklet is a photo with members of the proudly middle-aged, scraggly looking quartet, which performs tonight at the Coach House, proffering wilted bouquets and half-eaten boxes of chocolates.

The dark, brooding sound emanating from the disc pays perfect complement to the sardonic, bitter lyrics. This is music for disgruntled adults, not romance-minded adolescents.

At the blackened heart of the album--the group’s first for RCA--is the often-amusingly cranky rantings of Smithereens front man and songwriter Pat DiNizio, who seems to very much enjoy wallowing in his own cynicism.

“These songs say a lot about my sense of disenchantment with life in general,” DiNizio said in a recent phone interview. “It’s probably the most honest collection of songs that I’ve been able to come up with. I think it’s a great record. I don’t know that everyone is gonna get it, but I think it’s the best one we’ve done in years.”

“A Date with the Smithereens” is an Angst- ridden roar from a band already known for its uncompromising, against-the-grain vision and guitar-driven, hook-laden song craft. Guitars buzz like runaway chain saws, the hooks pound into memory, the lyrics provoke disturbing thoughts and questions about life, love and human motivation.

The New Jersey-bred, New York-based group, which includes drummer Dennis Diken, guitarist Jim Babjak and bassist Mike Mesaros, formed in 1980. The group spent five years as the stereotypical struggling band before being signed by Enigma Records.

Five albums, two EPs and a new label later, even in the face of the ebb and flow of popular trends, the group’s sound and direction remain finely honed, its essential power, wit and intellect undiminished.

The road hasn’t been paved with milk and honey, although the group has scored the minor hit here and there with such songs as “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” “Blood and Roses” and “A Girl Like You.”

“It was never easy for us,” said DiNizio, 37. “We were always different, from Day One. It took us five years to get our first record deal, which was on an independent label that signed us for $2,000. We’ve always been a bit out of time, never really fitting into one category. We were our own category. We’ve always refused to bow to conventions of the day.

“We came up in an era where the popular bands were rockabilly revivalists (or) synth-pop bands like the Human League, who we detested,” he said.

“Now what’s selling these days is skinny, pretty little long-haired guys who are 21 years old. We’re living in the era of the non-songwriter hit. There seems to be a lot of songs based on the riff, where the melody is just sort of improvised in a haphazard way.”

Not surprisingly, DiNizio said he doesn’t listen to much pop at home, favoring jazz instead. Still, he said, he holds a soft spot in his heart for the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“The early ‘70s was a great time to be young and listening to music,” he said. “You had the glam scene--Bowie, T-Rex and Gary Glitter, then you had your avant-glam stuff like Roxy Music and the Eno/Fripp collaborations, you had King Crimson and Yes, all that stuff.

“You had the Who, you had groups like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep, which were real metal groups, not this hybrid stuff that doesn’t mean anything. If you were so inclined, you had what I considered lightweight groups like Loggins & Messina and America. I never liked Southern rock, but you had Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. You had all this stuff coexisting on Top 40 radio, and I think it was a particularly healthy time. That and the classic AM radio of the ‘60s is what I grew up listening to.”

If times and sounds have radically changed since DiNizio was a young music fan, the Smithereens have remained reliably consistent in style, personnel and attitude.

“We’ve always been ambitious about what we do, believing in ourselves and our music,” he said. “We’ve never changed, we’ve always done what we do, and we’ve never tried to be anything else.”

* The Smithereens, the Grays and Factory perform tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $21.50. (714) 496-8930.