The Presidents of the United States of America
The Presidents of the United States of America

Something went wrong. Otherwise, there is no explanation for the oblivion to which the POTUSA have been consigned, the only band that colored my gray playlist of my gray '90s afternoons with energy, a playlist stuffed with grunge despair or hardcore fury. At that time, I detested beach power punk, stuff like Offspring or NOFX. Punk was a serious thing, usually dirty and anything but sunny. Melody is a hiccup, the rest is fury and despair. The rest is adolescence, crooked adolescence. Here though, in this record, none of that, we're among adults. Three resolved adults who have a handful of phenomenal choruses to let you hear. No anger, no protest. It's party punk, a contradiction in terms, a festive and vaguely nonsensical declination of the genre, something that for some reason makes me think of the B52s, not only in the light and carefree attitude, in the taste for perfect and never banal vocal intersections, but also in the ability to provide a very personal interpretation of the genre, not quite in line with the trend of the moment. The group's first album was released in '95 and they would even be from Seattle but, fatal error, they don't have long, dirty hair, they don't wear flannel shirts, and they play as if the world were truly a very fun place to live. The thing is that they don't do it using congas and maracas. They use a bass with guitar strings and a guitar with two bass strings, both distorted as they should be. They have a drummer who came from Love Battery, replaced there by the future drummer of Mudhoney. Three is the magic number, as De La Soul said. And in three, they are a war machine. Not the shouted despair of Nirvana. Not the boisterous and foolish one of Mudhoney (which, come to think of it, were 4). Not the sarcastic and psychotic one of Primus. Not even the silly one of early Green Day, who still hit hard. There is no despair in these 13 tracks, and that might be the reason why, although achieving decent notoriety at the time with "Lump," a video that often played on MTV, in reality, there is not much memory of them. Smart without being intellectual, heavy in ways but light in tone, they deliver 13 perfect slaps while smiling amusedly at you, like the train station scene in Amici miei. In short, damn, if you're late for an appointment, hop in the car (preferably a dune buggy, obviously) and put on the Presidents of the United States of America at an adequate volume. I always arrived on time (actually usually a few minutes early). The same goes for the group's second album, entitled in a Led Zeppelin-like manner II. Not with the subsequent ones, where the magic, fatally, does not repeat (magic always ends, no exceptions come to mind). End. I think I've been concise, like their songs.