Album Reviews
Presidents of the United States of America
Love Everybody
2004
View Presidents of the United States of America's page on Rhapsody
The Presidents of the United States of America scored a couple of quirky alt-pop hits in the mid-Nineties ("Lump," "Peaches"), then promptly disappeared. Their first album since 1997 makes a convincing case that they've spent the past seven years in a deep freeze: Their tastes, interests and sensibility sound largely unchanged. Frontman Chris Ballew acknowledges as much on "Some Postman," shouting "1993!" apropos of nothing, in the middle of his punchy chronicle of a mail carrier with a penchant for reading other people's love letters. Elsewhere, fuzzy, insistent leads from Ballew's two-string bassitar power jaunty tunes like "Love Everybody" and "Poke and Destroy." Deep thinking is consistently spurned in favor of unrelenting silliness: "Highway Forever" manages to make a snarling, punkabilly strut sound dorky (think the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" double-timed by Devo); "Jennifer's Jacket" is a folky acoustic ode to some girl's ratty coat. It's all perfectly agreeable, if not exactly worth waiting seven years for.
(Posted: Aug 17, 2004)
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