Poster (Innovative Leisure), the fourth LP by Long Beach’s Tijuana Panthers, arrives still glistening with a patina of historical punk afterbirth. It’s easy to go through the record and pick out references to its antecedents in the storied LA and Orange County music scenes. That said, there’s also enough sparking of elements struck against one another, as well as solid songwriting, to make this a record to revisit.

Often, <i>Poster</i> explodes into a thrilling cow-punk dance party. “Foolish” is an angry two-step flecked with surf guitar (courtesy of Chad Wachtel) and drums (Phil Shaheen), but those elements overlap and spread out on all sides like acid trails. The call and response vocals evoke X, but smudged and shifted to the background. “Set Forth” bursts at its seams with fuzzed-out bass (Daniel Michicoff) and sloganeering in bitten-off chunks. It’s a foot-stomper that’s not too precious about the vocals to obscure the chorus with a drum roll.

Propelled by Michicoff’s bass as a lead instrument and the diversity of vocal textures from all three members singing, the lower-key tracks are some of the strongest on the record. That throbbing, wine-dark bass fuels “Miss You Hardly Know Me,” with popping surf drums and guitars alternately delicate and noirish, all under a vocal that strains against itself as it moans the chorus, “I was sick of dreams. I wanted sympathy.” “Send Down the Bombs” pairs a crooning vocal with a nihilistic swing, unruffled like a punk Dean Martin on lines like, “There’s black flags taking over, for some it’s party time. I wish they could have their get-together and leave me alone. Let me have mine.” It’s riveting when that control gives way to a whirlwind of hi-hat, treble-laden guitar, and hard down-picking.

Tijuana Panthers lean a little too heavily on the angst and ennui of the suburbs as it comes up on enough songs to elicit fatigue. There are also a couple tracks that just fall flat: the heavy-handed Ramones by way of Rancid on “Right and Wrong” and the tumbling vocals and dull backing track of “I Hate Saturday Nights.” Elsewhere, though, there are songs that feel completely fresh, even if clear predecessors can be made out in the background. “Monitor,” the best, most ambitious song on the record, takes a shuffle and plays it at nigh-hardcore velocity with a thorny guitar hook and dueling vocals recounting a man’s terror at his life in sober reflection. “Trujillo,” the closing track, synthesizes the dread and doubt of the album and turns it into a white-hot laser beam of anger played out in cinemascope over a sweaty couples skate that cries out for handclaps even as it it makes you nervous.

With Poster, Tijuana Panthers have begun to slip out of the warm cocoon of what’s come before them and carve out a DayGlo place in those long shadows. Whether you know Dangerhouse from Hellcat, this record will resonate with the eternal promise and the creeping dread of youth on long summer nights.