saw the St. Louis rockabilly band the 7 Shot Screamers open for X a few years back, and they captivated me with their raucous set, replete with abundant displays of infectious energy such as Chris Powers riding his upright bass like a wooden bronco. Clearly I wasn’t the only one impressed: X frontwoman Exene Cervenka has adopted the Screamers and integrated them into the lineup of her Original Sinners side project. And to what delightful ends! While the first Original Sinners album fell off the assembly line a bit stillborn, the Screamers liven the new album up so much Cervenka titled it after them (a bit awkwardly, as it was cinematically, but still). Sev7en is as brightly fun as a Knitters album, and quite possibly the best thing its war-horse leader has done since X’s underrated 1987 album See How We Are.

How much difference does a glorified rhythm section make? Powers’ fingers playing hopscotch up and down the fretboard while drummer Kevin O’Conner alternates between big beats and subtle brushstrokes should tell you how much. On guitar, Dan Sabella trades licks with first-album holdover Jason Edge, and when the whole band gets jamming, as they do on, say, “Good at Bein’ Bad,” they swing, Daddy-o. Highly technical this is not, but when’s the last time Rush or the Dillinger Escape Plan made you want to snap your fingers and dance?

Presumably inspired by her peppy sidekicks, Cervenka (sometimes alongside Edge) wrote a solid batch of tunes for Sev7en. “What’s black and white, and read all over,” she asks on giddily rambunctious opening track “It Ain’t Supposed to Be,” before answering, “Don’t ask me, I’ve got no sense of humor.” The occasional maudlin tendencies of X partner John Doe’s solo work find no place here, as Cervenka wonders, “I don’t remember, was it a fender on a pick-up, or a pick-up on a Fender,” later on the nicely restrained “Tavern Love.” The Screamers, lively as they are, are hardly a necessary crutch; when Cervenka clears the room for the stark acoustic desolation of “Lonesome War,” the effect is haunting. The chorus on “Born Yesterday” might sound similar to “days change at night” on “Los Angeles,” but what’s a little rehashing among friends?

A cover of “Ghost on the Highway” by the great Gun Club provides a satisfying link to the glory days of the early 1980s, when that band and X might share a triple bill with the Germs or the Minutemen. And though Jeffrey Lee Pierce may be dearly departed, his sex beat lives on in Cervenka. Since her emergence nearly thirty years ago (she turned fifty in February!), she has had an intriguing artistic persona from which sexuality was never absent, but one which also never allowed it to monopolize her identity either. When she asks on “Last Dance,” “Do you recall the night we met, we danced until we hit the bed,” there’s no question Exene did the throwin’ down, and it’s refreshing to hear this middle-aged, far-from-thin woman make her lusty boasts from a position of confidence about her desirability (she waxes grouchy about “hourglass figures” elsewhere on the album).

Sev7en isn’t a classic album, striving for a place in some canonical pantheon. It doesn’t want to be. It’s nothing more and nothing less than an honest bit of rock, served with care and pleasure. X still rips it up onstage, but it’s disheartening how vocal they are about seeing the band as nothing but a job. With the reconfigured Original Sinners, though, Cervenka suggests she hasn’t yet exchanged her wild gift for a cash return.