ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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The Presidents of The United States of America
THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES PEOPLE COOKING VINYL 10.03.08 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk The Presidents of The USA are back! Although according to their press blurb they’ve never been away and during their last tour in 2004 ‘blissed-out teens by the thousands served as testament to their timelessness’. The band who penned the immortal lines ‘Peaches come from a can, They were put there by a man’ on one of their major worldwide hits in 1995; now release their new album (and fourth overall) on an unsuspecting public. Despite being pessimistic on first playing this album; it proves to be a pretty enjoyable romp. Unlike many similar goof-rock bands who appeal to all-American college jocks; Presidents of the USA do have a wry intelligence to their otherwise throwaway bounce-along ditties. Lying somewhere in between being a bit more quirky and witty than someone like the utterly gormless Offspring but not up to being quite as eccentric/hyper-intellectual as early REM; they play to their limits and pull it off somehow. The first couple of tracks ease you in and aren’t particularly thrilling; but then comes a double whammy - ‘Sharpen Up Those Fangs’ and ‘Bad Times’ are both corking stomp-along punk-pop delights; and are by far the best tracks here. They provide good examples of the band’s sharp lyricisms with couplets such as ‘She’s got those rock star girlfriend eyes; the kind that fry the back of your skull...’ The whole album chugs along with joyous abandon and clocks in at a little over 39 minutes for fourteen tracks – prog rock it ain’t. In short it’s all good fun; but doesn’t expect too much intellectual stimulation from this one. www.presidentsrock.com |