Spirited ‘Chase’ Offers Musical, Emotional Range

*** 1/2 THE ORANGE COUNTY SUPERTONES

“Chase the Sun”

BEC Recordings

“Chase the Supertones” may be the name of the game soon in the world of Christian rock, and though fans and more famous practitioners don’t know it yet, “Chase the Supertones” already is the name of the game in the ska-rock genre in general.

With its third album, the Mission Viejo band confirms and builds upon its excellent 1997 release, “The Supertones Strike Back.” That album’s meld of catchy melody, shining playing, and the warm, bracing urgency and heart that singer Matt Morginsky brought to his songs of mature spiritual struggle marked the Supertones as the only Orange County ska band that matters.

“Chase the Sun,” though not perfect, moves forward from that high standard. All in all, it’s about as involving, cohesive and sustained a visitation into the workings of a committed, self-aware religious consciousness as Christian rock is apt to yield. “Chase the Son” is the Supertones’ game, and eavesdropping while they sort through the big questions raised by a vow to find ultimate meaning in Jesus makes for fascinating listening for anybody interested in how spiritual quests--Christian or otherwise--unfold.

*

Effervescent musicianship and bright yet not-too-slick production draw the listener in. Morginsky takes care of the rest with a scuffed, gamely determined, openly embracing tone that is modern-rock’s worthiest heir to Ray Davies of the Kinks, the most humane and intimately touchable rock voice of all. (One can almost salivate at the thought of a Supertones cover of “Better Things,” the early 1980s Kinks’ masterpiece whose message of hope and encouragement would not be out of place in the Supertones’ unflaggingly Christian, never-mind-the-crossover-here’s-the-Cross context.)

Morginsky, the primary lyricist, gives the album depth and dimension by concerning himself not just with the personal, but also the public and social, ramifications of religious commitment. He grapples in songs like “Sure Shot” and “In Between” with a poignant awareness of the gap between the divine light he can feel and the failure-prone flesh that it falls upon: “Who I am is in between/What I wanna be and what I am.”

*

The Supertones, who already have sold some 300,000 copies of “Strike Back,” have earned what should become a massive following in the Christian circuit by exploding past doubt with the believer’s essential leap of faith. But the magic lies in not overextending that leap into happy-talk dogmatism; for them, the painful struggle that serious spirituality entails and the joyful release it promises are equally valid, equally real.

The joy is a gift that relieves the doubt and allows the quest to continue. But it doesn’t resolve the tensions of the human “In Between” state of which Morginsky sings.

The Supertones also gravitate between conflicted poles in examining their role as public evangelists. In “Away From You,” a fetching, mellow reggae ballad that owes a debt to Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” Morginsky, the king of Orange County Christian pop, is joined by its queen, Crystal Lewis, for lustrous harmonizing.

But it’s not just ear candy. Morginsky wonders aloud whether his mission of spreading the faith is futile or, worse, presumptuous: “What if I told you I held the one true philosophy?/Would you hear me out or just turn your back and laugh at me?” By song’s end, he retreats to the more comfortable, and commonplace stance of cultivating a personal faith--though it leaves him wondering whether he’s shirking a higher calling that demands he spread the Word.

In the next two songs, “Dedication” and “Grounded,” the Supertones come storming back, Bible in hand, determined to fight on as Christian soldiers on the rock ‘n’ roll battleground. In the hard-hitting “Grounded,” they holler a “hoo-hah” refrain borrowed from the not-so-Christian soldier Al Pacino played in “Scent of a Woman.”

The prime targets of Morginsky’s ireful zeal are not the unchurched heathens, but the churched hypocrites. “One Voice” is an appeal to unity among infighting Christian denominations, and “Health and Wealth” is as withering an indictment of smug, comfortable, socially uninvolved religiosity (which the Supertones equate with American Christianity in general) as you’ll get this side of the Gospel dictum that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

“It doesn’t take long to figure out where all our money goes,” Morginsky concludes. “We’re the poorest billionaires Jesus knows.”

*

Stylistically, the Supertones keep things moving nicely. The horn-embellished ska-skip, the light-reggae skank and the punker zoom figure prominently; but the band can comfortably transubstantiate into a folk-rock act in “Old Friend,” which sounds like the Everly Brothers stopping by Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” to hoist toasts with Jesus (the “old friend” in question). “Refuge (In Conclusion)” is a glowing end piece with acoustic guitar and strings; having just lacerated the flock in “Health and Wealth,” Morginsky sends them off with a gentle, tenderly put question: “There’s nothing left but Jesus, and no one left but you/Where will you go from here?”

Source material gets pulled in omnivorously: Morginsky evokes a medieval Jewish religious poem in “Hanani,” and the Supertones dash into the “Pipeline”-style surf of 1960s California in the instrumental “Revolution.” Rap enters the picture, nicely in passages inspired by Jamaican toasting; less so in the title track’s straight hip-hop call-out homage to all things West Coast.

“Fade Away” presents an outstanding linkage of Sublime’s taut, thrusting ska-reggae and Social Distortion’s intense, sing-along-punk chorus weaving; drummer Jason Carson, a strong, flexible player, swings deftly from jazzy accents to Buddy Miles machine-gunning to a clipped punk beat during an instrumental break midway through the song.

One mystery to ponder: Morginsky likes the phrase “Neutral as a Nazi” so much to signify his religious fervor that he revives it, during the title track, after having used it in a song from the previous Supertones album. Why a songwriter proclaiming zeal for the good would link himself via simile to the ultimate in evil fanaticism is incomprehensible and betrays a strange deafness to the meaning of Nazism. Next time, maybe “Dainty as Dahmer?”

The Supertones also miss a rare opportunity by the width of a single pronoun: The opening line of “In Between” goes, “Please allow me to introduce me . . .” when good grammar and rock tradition should have dictated “Please allow me to introduce myself.” The Supertones get a rhyme by using “me” but miss the richer satirical possibilities of a Christian band upending “Sympathy For the Devil.”

Still, that’s quibbling about an act that really is pretty super. Even though crossing over to the rock mainstream with such single-mindedly religious content seems a stretch, the Supertones have a chance to emerge as Orange County’s band of the year.

* The Orange County Supertones play a free acoustic show tonight at Tower Records in the Laguna Hills Mall, 23451 Calle de la Luisa. 7 p.m. (949) 465-0300.

*

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