Presidents of the United States of America: Love Everybody : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

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.