POP MUSIC REVIEW : NOW RAVE-UPS ARE LONE FAVORITES ON CLUB SCENE

Now that Lone Justice has gone to bigger things, it’s time to find another new favorite on the local club scene. My blue-ribbon suggestion: the Rave-Ups.

But you’d better hurry; the group is progressing so swiftly that you won’t be able much longer to see it as part of a triple bill for just $5--as you could Friday night at the Palomino Club.

We’re not talking cult band this time. The Rave-Ups isn’t a group, like the Arizona’s Meat Puppets, that requires a lot of tolerance on the part of mainstream rock audiences.

This quartet deals in an accessible and endearing style of American rock whose roots run as deep and wide as Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty.

Leader Jimmer Podrasky is that rare find: someone with the seductive good looks and charisma to excite MTV’s young female audience and the solid songwriting skills to reach out meaningfully to a broader and more sophisticated audience.

Podrasky, who moved here from Pittsburgh three years ago, walked on stage Friday, looking as rumpled as if he had just rolled out of bed. His wrinkled shirt sleeve stretched far beyond the limits of his black jacket and he kept rubbing his tousled blond hair.

When the music started, however, he stepped to the microphone and sang with authority and snap. In tunes like “In My Gremlin,” Podrasky saluted rock’s frisky, party-time instincts, but he also worked on a more original level.

As with most of his influences, there is a strong sense of innocence and romanticism running through his songs, yet he is capable of sarcasm and bite when reflecting on a broken relationship. “You lost a lot when you lost me,” he snarls.

But Podrasky’s best songs revolve around a questioning of contemporary values. He writes a lot about alienation and suburban blues, though not in predictable fashion. Rather than suggest his generation has a better grip on things than his parents’ generation, Podrasky serves as a devil’s advocate--deflating the smugness and/or whimpering he sees around him. He’s also not afraid to show his own insecurities and doubts.

“Remember,” which he dedicated Friday to the late Tommy Thomas (the longtime owner of the Palomino), is a song about life’s riddles that has an unexpectedly bittersweet side. Sample line, Funny how the things we fear . . . will save us / Funny how the things we love . . . will leave us.

In the poignant “Better World,” he moves to an even wider and more philosophical canvas: Choked to death on a four leaf clover / If God is dead, then who took over?

The words sometimes overshadow the arrangements and production touches on “Town + Country,” the Rave-Ups’ debut album on the small Fun Stuff label. The same imbalance weakened a recent show at the Music Machine.

At the Palomino, however, the musicians--especially guitarist Terry Wilson--played like a football team with momentum on its side and the goal-line stripe in sight--a glorious display of energy and desire that registered strongly on almost every scale that matters in rock ‘n’ roll. You can see the Rave-Ups just for a good time or for the deeper--and inspiring--emotional charge that only the premier bands deliver.