The singing starts before the band does, and so there is no avoiding the opening couplet, delivered in a plaintive voice by a man who evidently hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be a boy: “I am every person that you’ve ever ignored / I am the flaming bag of dog shit on your porch.” It is a kind of mission statement, and also an efficient sorting device. Those charmed by this collision of the earnest and the asinine will surely enjoy “Mable,” the ebullient new album by a West Chester, Pennsylvania, pop-punk band called Spraynard, which is due out on July 10. And those uncharmed may nevertheless feel a grudging admiration for the unlikely longevity of pop punk itself, a seemingly silly genre that still works as well as it ever did, more than twenty years after “Dookie,” the Green Day album, pushed it into the mainstream.

Pat Graham is the guitarist and singer of Spraynard, and his musical life was shaped by a hip older sister, who took him to see Green Day when he was ten. Graham soon graduated to more obscure bands, but never lost his faith in the power of fast tempos and bright melodies, and when he was nineteen he formed Spraynard with two childhood friends. The band released a pair of slapdash but memorable (and modestly popular) albums and then, three years ago, suddenly broke up, because Graham was increasingly stressed out by the prospect of turning his larkish band into a serious concern. Spraynard reunited last year, and gradually Graham decided to rededicate himself to the band full-bore, although not quite full-time—both he and Pat Ware, the drummer, have the same suitably flexible jobs they have had since high school, at a batting-cage complex owned by Graham’s brother.

Like many of the most important pop-punk bands, Spraynard has figured out that the genre’s juvenile reputation doesn’t preclude thoughtfulness. In fact, the continued vitality of pop punk owes a lot to deft songwriters like Graham, who understand that energetic songs need not be cheerful. (In this respect, the genre’s true trailblazer is not Green Day but Blink-182, who chronicled depression and diarrhea with equal gusto.) “Mable” is full of songs about strained relationships, not all of them necessarily romantic—it is possible that Graham’s most traumatic breakup, and reconciliation, was with his band. And even at his most impassioned he can sound decidedly reasonable, yelping, “Some nights you will need to sleep alone, and that’s alright / Is it alright if that’s not tonight?” The band plays Amityville Music Hall, on Long Island, on June 27, and then Shea Stadium, the do-it-yourself space in Brooklyn, on July 16, by which time the kids (including the grownup kids) in the crowd will have no excuse not to know all the lyrics to the new songs, and sing along. ♦