Some Catchy Kvetching

What’s a poor boy do when he’s young, full of testosterone and absolutely everything about life is . . . well, not so bad?

If you’re the members of Dodge Dart, you start a band, power up and fret like there’s no tomorrow about your apartment, your lack of friends and something in your eye.

The Costa Mesa quartet’s debut CD takes garage punk back to its roots in the ‘70s gabba-gabba-heyday of the Ramones and piles on melodic hook after hook to lyrical concerns that make the “Seinfeld” gang’s worries seem positively weighty.

Singer-songwriter Nick Sjobeck, guitarist John Klein, bassist Mitch Townsend and drummer Jamie Reidling play with such infectious good humor and incessant energy that everything becomes charmingly stoopid rather than mundanely stupid.

The most serious things get is in “911 (Who Is Gonna Dial . . . ),” in which the protagonist bemoans the fact that all his friends are “co-dependent ex-narcotic junkies”--the only problem being which of them will be functional enough to call the paramedics for the others when the time comes. A goofy guitar riff takes a bit of the morbid edge off.

The title song puts their unapologetic pride in the good and bad of American life across in relatively subtle fashion. “Sex, cars . . . drugs and bars are so American / Rock, TV . . . You and me are nut-case Americans / The other countries bore me, so let’s drink to the U.S.A. / I’m so glad I’m a cool American guy.”

Before starting this band in 1995, Sjobeck (a.k.a. Nicky Fidget) was in the Goods, noteworthy as a launching pad for Tony Scalzo of Fastball, and as the band that evolved out of Electric Cool-Aide, in which Mark McGrath was lead singer in his pre-Sugar Ray life.

In fact, Scalzo and Sjobeck resurrected the Goods earlier this year for a local show and have talked about keeping the Goods alive as a side project when Scalzo isn’t tied up with Fastball.

Here’s a selfish wish that Fastball doesn’t go on hiatus often enough to keep Dodge Dart garaged for very long.

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* Fear, Drain Bramaged, Dodge Dart and Mr. Firley play tonight at Club Mesa, 843 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa. 9 p.m. Cover. (949) 642-8448.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.

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Randy Lewis can be reached by e-mail at randy.lewis@latimes.com.