Time Capsule: The Presidents of the United States of America, The Presidents of the United States of America

Grunge, however you define it, still dominated the perception of the Seattle music scene following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in April 1994. The disparate bands marketed under that reductive banner—most notably Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden—continued to shift millions of records, and you couldn’t toss a Doc Marten into the air without smacking an Eddie Vedder soundalike in the face as dozens of outsiders rode the flannel shirt-tails of those tentpole bands to varying levels of success. Still, more and more cracks began to surface in Seattle’s seemingly monolithic stranglehold on alternative rock. In the same calendar year as Cobain’s passing, blocks of alt-rock radio were injecting Beck’s slacker bars, Seal’s crooning and Hootie’s gospel pining into the steady diet of distortion, alienation and pained introspection that still sustained the industry. Clearly, alt-rock radio, though not ready to abandon grunge, had freed up vacancies for new voices from unusual places to emerge and restore some balance to the airwaves. Ironically, it would be another Seattle band—one belonging on the all-time Mount Rushmore of Unlikely Rock Stars—that helped usher in a mid-‘90s alternative rock scene fit for unabashed silliness, unapologetic joy and kicking out the goddamn jams.

If you asked Chris Ballew—the recognizable, baldheaded bassist and lead singer of The Presidents of the United States of America—anointing his little band that could as “bright, little overlords … who vanquished the dark characters” sharing their hometown would be a hyperbolic twisting of reality. In actuality, he and guitarist Dave Dederer, a longtime collaborator, and drummer Jason Finn (formerly of influential local bands Skin Yard and Love Battery) were just one of many harmoniously co-existing flavors coming out of the Emerald City at the time. However, even Ballew would have to admit that not many of the bands who swam against the predominant musical current of the day made a cannonball-sized splash like his Presidents. Their eponymous, inaugural 1995 album (first out on local label PopLlama Records) remains one of the decade’s most dumbfounding and endearing success stories. Armed with the bare minimum of strings any rock band should have and Ballew’s strange, entomic window on the world, the band delivered a charming, emphatic debut that transcends, nay obliterates, any notion of filing these songs away as mere novelties, juvenilia or ephemera from a bygone blip in pop culture.

Millions who grew up with this record will still have the dune buggy-on-gravel opening crunch of “Kitty” scratched into their eardrums. In many ways, the song encapsulates so much of what defines the Presidents of the United States of America across the album: crisp, singalong vocals; unlikely topics for rock songs; and a signature alchemy of oddball instruments, musical chemistry and a fun-loving approach to songcraft. The track’s initial bluster, if cartoonish, gets immediately undercut by faux meows that quickly turn from comical to haunting in this tale of a “little bag of bones” left outside on a rainy night. According to Ballew, the song is simply about a love-hate relationship with a friend’s cat, but, like so many of his vignettes, we can read in human elements of temptation, manipulation and, consequently, getting fucked over by letting one’s guard down. It’s all silly and dumb but, in some ways, no less affecting than the betrayals we’ve witnessed in a million relationship songs. Either way, the trio slam the pedal down in a sprint for the finish line that leaves us chanting, “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, touch it” and still humming this feral diddy decades after our scratches have healed.

Much of the album’s charm comes from Ballew’s ability to build worlds and scenes from the little dramas playing out all around him. It’s not unlike a small child sitting in his backyard on a summer day and letting his imagination churn away as blades of grass twitch, critters scamper and the buzzing of insects hints at melodies. Indeed, the hillbilly, countrified “Back Porch” actually envisions a 70-year-old Ballew daydreaming from the confines of his rocking chair as all the anthropomorphic characters that populate this album reunite for a geriatric jam session. As a songwriter, Ballew takes equal turns as Dr. Doolittle, Christopher Robin (also see his Giraffes project) and Wayne Szalinski. Long before conspiracy theories questioned the realness of birds, “Feather Pluckn” tapped into the revelation that not only are animals in constant communicative cahoots, but they’re forming bands and operating tiny automobiles. Ballew shrinks his sights down to bug size on the trippy “Dune Buggy” as two spiders go for a joyride on the beach, powered by a “rubber-band motor” and “eight thimble-sized cylinders.” And the band’s funky intervention on the boogying “Boll Weevil” could just as well be aimed at a friend in need of a nudge (it was) instead of a shiftless beetle who refuses to vacate. While many of Ballew’s flights of fancy are delivered with an overflowing of mirth, never once does the listener mistake playfulness for a reason not to take these silly songs seriously.

That’s primarily because the Presidents of the United States of America actually had the musical chops to deliver on their campaign promise to “rock our asses ‘til midnight.” Ballew and Dederer’s improvisational history as a duo make the shifts between the styles mentioned above feel both effortless and spontaneous, and the liberating power unlocked by the former’s modified two-string “basitar” and the latter’s three-string “guitbass”—not to mention Finn’s “no-string drums”—played in unconventional tunings created a pliable, off-kilter sound that made the Presidents instantly recognizable when any of their songs came blasting from the radio. Fuzzed-out #1 hit “Lump” sounded utterly unique as it cut through the bloated, lumbering rock songs of the day in Ballew’s stab at writing a Buzzcocks’ song about his benign tumor and a vision of a woman in a swamp. Dederer’s backing vocals sung an octave lower than Ballew’s and Finn’s clashing accents combine to help create two minutes and change of tiny explosions and sublime silliness that still demands air-kicks. “Peaches” flips between Bad Company folk and Nirvana detonations before barreling out in a Crazy Horse-inspired chug for a final act. Hang some fruit cans from trees, throw in some ninjas for the fuck of it and Ballew’s LSD trip under a prospective girlfriend’s peach tree turned into arguably the most improbable anthem of the ‘90s.

While original tunes about felines, tumors and pitted fruit will forever highlight the Presidents’ legacy as a band, a pair of back-to-back covers on this record’s second half perfectly define their platform and agenda. The adamant, self-deprecating “We Are Not Going to Make It” sounds like a Presidents song through and through with its single-take rawness and the humorous self-awareness that “there’s a million better bands with a million better songs.” In actuality, the song comes from Traci Lords’ Ex-Lovers, a college band Ballew knew of that didn’t quite make it, and he hoped covering their anthem would help preserve it. In that respect, it felt like even more of a mission accomplished when the Presidents would end the song live with “Looks like we made it…” Contrarily, Ballew jokes that it took the MC5’s Wayne Kramer needing a new garage before he signed off on the Presidents’ covering the iconic “Kick Out the Jams” with rewritten lyrics about rockets and poodles. However, the band lean right into the spirit of this classic with a presidential flair, “solemnly swearing to uphold the Constitution” while offering solutions to all of our “rock and roll problems.” The song succinctly sums up the band’s rock and roll ethos of jam first, worry about the rest later. Subsequent covers of the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” (for The Wedding Singer) and Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks” (for The Drew Carey Show) would also demonstrate how the Presidents of the United States of America were remarkably adept at putting their presidential seal on most any rock song.

It’s not all pure frosting on this debut, of course. The confectionary “Candy,” with its “Red rope hair / Gumdrop lips / And cotton candy thighs,” while clever, always feels more like a creative writing exercise than a fully baked song. “Lump” follower “Stranger,” a subtle nod to the missed connections section of the famed Seattle paper of the same name, leans too heavily on Ballew’s ability to make any chorus catchy enough to sing along to. And the slinky “Body” finds a worthwhile groove but slithers along for a verse too long. Even Chickie would’ve peeled out in Piggy’s little blue car before this one finally rallies down its homestretch. Luckily, “Back Porch” quickly follows to return us to the peach-slurpin’, fingerpicking goodness that never overstays its welcome.

Like their Oval Office counterparts, these Presidents have come and gone over the years. Family, the rigors of band life and other interests have led to breakups, reunions and even a lineup change during their last term. All have found life in music outside of the band—most notably Ballew’s prolific stint writing children’s music as Caspar Babypants—but never have the approval ratings been as high as when this original trio emerged from the shadows of grunge to remind all of us that rock and roll can always use a few more smiles, a bit more nonsense and millions more peaches. God bless America.