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*** SUPERNOVICE, “Timely” Onset Records

“It’s timely,” David Turbow sings in the final, dejected refrain of his third consecutive good album as the guiding principal of Supernovice. He delivers it in a voice that drinks deeply of resignation but splashes it with a sharp twist of wry.

You can’t begrudge Turbow his gibe, the kind of little inward joke people make to keep from bursting into tears. Because “Timely” also is the third consecutive good album Turbow has made on his own tab as an object of utter indifference from the record industry, his need for amusing ironies is obvious.

Pop rewards operators and exaggerators. The chesty blubbering of an Eddie Vedder or the hound-dog contortions of a Billy Corgan have the big-gesture value that the music biz (rightly) equates with big profit margins. Turbow is a miniaturist, communicating his beefs and losses in a flattish, unassuming voice that sometimes rises to a more adamant scowl but always sticks to what’s ordinary and human.

Stylistically, Supernovice is very untimely. With his latest band of ever-changing recruits, Turbow still sounds like 1991. It seemed back then that the Lemonheads, Blake Babies, Breeders and Pixies would have a shot at inheriting the Earth. Never mind. Along came 1992, when it became clear that the Seattle-spawned new arena rock had conquered instead.

But with some unaccustomed luck, even Turbow has a chance to come out a winner. His ticket in the pop lottery is Johnna Corbett, 18, a newcomer who plays a mighty fine Juliana Hatfield to his Evan Dando. Turbow is no glamor-hunk junkie romantic like Dando, but Corbett is no piping little baby-voiced waif like Hatfield. Her soprano backing vocals have good body and piercing urgency; on three lead turns, she sounds like a potential star who can make it on voice, not just personality.

“Stay for the Winter” is the album’s gem--the plaintive, sad and openhearted song that lets lyricist Turbow keep up his true-romantic’s credentials amid lots of sour musings. Corbett projects wistful warmth akin to Bettie Serveert’s Carol van Dijk, and a bravely melancholy chorus melody gives the song the aura of a VH-1 hit, minus the video budget.

“Timely” isn’t all sighs. “You’re Divine” playfully cops the rubbery riff of the Breeders’ hit “Cannonball”; it shows Supernovice’s ability to generate motion and energy with lighter textures (no innovator, Turbow repeatedly goes for the light verse/heavy chorus tidal structure, yet manages to keep it percolating and fresh).

Save Ferris, the O.C. ska-rock band soon to be anointed with its commercially savvy cover of “Come On Eileen” comes in for a thorough and hearty skewering on “Liverwurst.” It’s a spoof on SF’s chirpy number “Spam” and a fun-poking broadside at the O.C. ska-punk scene in general, with more oblique swipes at such stars and contenders as Reel Big Fish and Home Grown.

Hawaiian shirts with my dyed-blue spiky hair Knees and elbows are flyin’ through the air.

Write a song about my favorite luncheon meat, Grown at home and my brains are in my seat.

If the local ska-ristocracy has its brains more productively situated than Turbow thinks, it will stifle the urge to dismiss him as a bitter loser and start inviting Supernovice to share some high-profile gigs.

(Available from Onset Records, P.O. Box 1918, Garden Grove, CA 92842.)

* Supernovice, the Pressure and Cinnamon Ford play Aug. 28 at the Raven Playhouse, 5233 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hollywood. All ages. 8 p.m. $5. (818) 509-9519.