From the minute the Irish punk-pop trio Ash hurl (literally) into their first number, "Lose Control," on their latest album, 1977, it's apparent that the band's credo is edgy fun, a combination of hard guitars and catchy melodies that's been a staple of British pop since the days of the Undertones and Buzzcocks, but is only now becoming a part of the American vocabulary.

It's all there in the intro: massive guitar attack, a bit of a hook, and a joking reference to their roots as an incompetent teenage metal band. Fortunately, 1977 (an homage to the year the first Star Wars movie came out, according to the band's bio, but, it should be noted, also the year punk emerged from the underground on both sides of the Atlantic) keeps it coming for the next fifty-one entertaining minutes.

Along the way, they illustrate perfectly just what it is that divides the British (and European) and American pop scenes at the moment: two different answers to the question of taking oneself seriously. Much of what's considered cutting-edge in the States is so damn serious, so introspective, so grim. There's always been a place for this in pop music, of course, but these days, the Brits put it in the larger context, and never forget that the primary purpose of making this music is to entertain. Songs like "Girl From Mars," for instance, are awash with cliched romantic imagery, yet the object of the song's affections is, apparently, just what the title says. It takes the edge off of the romanticism as effectively as the feedback squawk during the acoustic intro.

Which is not to say that they can't occasionally slip into wide-screen romanticism of a particularly teenage sort, as in "Oh Yeah," a rose-colored look back at a teenage romance. Rose-colored? How about those lyrics: "Bee-stung lips, kisses sweeter than wine." Gawd. But it's delivered so unaffectedly that it works.

In fact, it's this romanticism that made me think, the first time I played 1977, of the Beach Boys, of all the unlikely groups. Tim Wheeler, who seems to write most of the songs, has definitely got an updated version of whatever impulse it was that made Brian Wilson write things like "California Girls" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice," that sort of doomed sentimentalism that strikes such a chord in teenagers. And, within the confines of a totally different kind of musical context, he manages to make it work. He's even got a thing for voices as the intro and chorus of "Angel Interceptor" makes clear.

Ash has what it takes to do all right, and I'll admit a preference for their brash, big sound (kudos to producer Owen Morris for delivering such a monstrous, kick-ass brightness) to the low-fi, rather more angst-ridden take on things their transatlantic colleagues fixate on these days.

But one thing I will never do is listen to 1977 all the way through again. Because after the last notes of "Darkside Lightside" fade away, there's one of those inimitable surprises bands like to leave on CDs. True, you've got plenty of time to push the STOP button, but if you don't, you get treated to the source of that sample that opened the record. Thanks anyway, guys.