Four More Years?

The Presidents of the United States of America

by M.J. Fine

M.J. Fine does it again

Leap years bring three certainties: Summer Olympics, a presidential election and a new album from The Presidents of the United States of America. Like clockwork, the Seattle jokers are back with their first album in four years — sixth full-length, fourth in an election year — and their new single is more of the same, essentially rewriting their biggest hit.

The Presidents of the United States of America The Presidents of the United States of America (Columbia, 1995)

The Presidents of the United States of America These Are the Good Times People (Fugitive, 2008)

There's this girl, see:

"She's lump, she's lump, she's in my head," Chris Ballew sang in the too-obvious "Lump."

Her vital signs don't look good:

"She's lump, she's lump, she's lump, she might be dead."

"She held her breath and turned her face all red/ That's how they found her in her bed all dead."

She's lazy and dumb:

"Lump lingered last in line for brains/ And the ones she got were sort of rotten and insane."

"She's stuck in gear, it's just too bad it's reverse."

She's got poor time-management skills:

"She spent her 20s between the sheets/ Life limped along at subsonic speeds."

"See the lovin' tree growin'/ Life is walking by."

And despite it all, the singer's reluctantly in thrall:

"Is this lump out of my head?/ I think so."

"I could never tell you the truth about her 'cause she's so mixed up."

If the rest of These Are the Good Times People isn't so blatantly derivative, it's because the Presidents have cast a wider net. "Flame Is Love" is a credible swing tune; "Deleter" is surely the funkiest song ever inspired by Robyn Hitchcock. "More Bad Times" is actually pretty good, but if you listened to college radio in the '90s, you've already heard it. And though Ballew sounds a little too pleased with their titles, the roaring "French Girl" and the decidedly country "Truckstop Butterfly" reveal a depth that would have been unimaginable when the Presidents first came out.

1995 wasn't an election year, but their debut was perfectly timed in its own way. Anyone from Seattle could get a record deal then, and The Presidents of the United States of America sounds like it. With five strings between them, basitarist Ballew and guitbassist Dave Dederer don't display much musical range, and the novelty lyrics grate. "Kitty," with its sludgy riffs and cloying mews, firmly places the band in the city that spawned both Mudhoney and the Young Fresh Fellows, and "Peaches" grows moldy before the one-minute mark. Inexplicably, both songs charted, giving the Presidents two hits more than they aspired to. "We Are Not Gonna Make It" and "Kick Out the Jams" are affably self-aware of their lack of ambition, but don't have much else going for them.

But who needs fresh ideas? The Presidents can coast on experience.

(m_fine@citypaper.net)

The next president of the United States of America will be all over Pennsylvania in the next few weeks. The Presidents of the United States of America will stump at the Troc on March 26.