By and large, there are two ways that punk rockers age. One group – Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, John Doe, John Lydon – explore other musical directions and apply the punk spirit to new forms. The other – look to many a punk veteran for examples – simply stay the course, get bitter and crusty, and dream of the glory days.

Exene Cervenka is a rare exception to those alternatives. The onetime/sometimes front woman for Los Angeles punk legends X, Cervenka’s been able to hold onto her punk rock past without sounding embittered, nostalgic or like a washed-up middle-ager in a Springsteen song. With Sev7en, Cervenka retools her Original Sinners – only guitarist Jason Edge remains from the last lineup as she borrows the Seven Shot Sinners’ rhythm section – and returns to explore the overlapping worlds of Americana and punk that defined X’s early albums.

Sev7en doesn’t exclusively play the X nostalgia card – although it’s impossible to separate Cervenka’s voice, as well as the rockabilly overtones that steer the Sinners’ course from X’s legacy – as Cervenka and company play things fast, loose and more spirited than either the act’s first release, 2002’s self-titled affair or X ever mustered. Where Cervenka’s past releases took music as a deadly serious engine of artistic endeavors and social commentary, Sev7en finds Cervenka cutting loose and having fun. Although she doesn’t succumb to silliness, there’s a buoyancy that keeps this album sounding as if, unlike most of her peers, Cervenka still enjoys making punk rock noise, even as she combines it with liberal doses of Americana and early rock’n’roll. “Sky Blue Pink” takes open-road punkabilly riffs that are the perfect soundtrack for cruising the Devil’s Highway in New Mexico and Colorado, while Cervenka lays down her trademark wailing vocals. “Good at Being Bad” sinks into an R&B/country hybrid that revels in Sun Studio’s legacy, while “Ghost on the Highway” is the closest thing Cervenka’s done to straight-up alt-country since she collaborated with The Old 97’s on Too Far to Care (1997, Elektra).

Cervenka isn’t breaking any new ground on Sev7en, but she sure sounds like she’s enjoying herself immensely reworking X’s country/folk/punk hybrid on this album. Her enthusiasm is infectious, too, as it makes the twangy punk leanings on this album a fitting side note to any X fan’s collection.