Sonia Weber tries to find the right words, coincidentally speaking for the masses on Alien Boy’s third album, You Wanna Fade? “I told you the other day / I don’t want things to change but I feel it deep down / That it’s, yeah, it’s all gonna rot / Away without a thought,” Weber intones on “Rhythm of Control,” the album's fifth track. As a concept, the rhythm of control sounds menacing… but it could be an oxymoron, a misdirect—nothing at all. If it’s all going to rot away, what do we have to lose?

On their first record in four years, the Portland-based pop-punkers Alien Boy conquer anxieties, nerves, and fears by running headlong through them. There’s a searching quality inherent on You Wanna Fade? expressed through Weber’s vocals, vacillating between haunting and optimistic; with Derek McNeil patiently keeping time on the drums; while Caleb Misclevitz, A.P. Fiedler, and Weber insight a full-spectrum emotional workout with their range of guitar playing.

You Wanna Fade? will melt hearts with easy comparisons to guitar records released 25 years ago. It all sounds a little shopworn, even fuzzy—like the popping of vinyl after playing a favorite record hundreds of times. The album’s a gem, a fully realized world of contradiction and ambiguity, of furtive steps and sidelong glances, and what lies on the other side.

So you wanna fade, huh? Can you fade responsibly? Is fading a consent to bondage or an act of manumission? Taken as individuals, the narrators of You Wanna Fade? carry themselves like the short-fiction characters of Tao Lin—questioning their agency, purpose, relationships, and values. Life could be as anodyne as watching a real-time documentary of one’s own existence. Or it could be something powerful, something awe-full.

Alien Boy raises and confronts those existential questions from the album’s earliest notes. The instrumental opener, “Scrub Me Clean” is a contemplative aperitif, setting the mood for the entirety of You Wanna Fade? One of the last tracks to be written, “Scrub Me Clean” deftly draws from the subsequent eleven tracks—weaving a tapestry not fully graspable until you’ve listened to the album’s entirety.

Time is fungible and flexible on You Wanna Fade?, as is the development of perspective. Listeners are snapped back into reality—such as it is—with the album’s peppy, manic first single, “Changes.” Its catchy chorus is meant to be sung at the top of your lungs with no regard for tone, while “Another Brand New Me” is a punk-inflected ode to social awkwardness and identity crises.

Alien Boy give space to the tortured adolescent living in the nervous adult, the new album embracing the emotional connections the two have built together over a lifetime. Feelings are big at any age—more importantly, existence lies beyond them.

The delightful final stretch of the album builds on a tantalizing grasp for connection and purpose—ascending to a higher plane. On the triumphant, climactic “Everything Stays,” Weber, Misclevitz, and Fiedler bring urgency to the song’s existential dread with true guitar heroism, with Weber singing “I’m stuck this way / What do you think? / I’m counting minutes as we speak / Until the next obsessive fit / You want the truth? You’re stuck in it.”

Alien Boy drop You Wanna Fade? May 9 with an album release party that same night at Polaris Hall featuring openers Phony and Conspire. (Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Ct, Fri May 9, 8 pm, $18, tickets here, all ages)