Released: March 11, 2008
Label: PUSA Inc.

Everyone loves a good time, and nobody brings the fun like the Presidents of the United States of America. Throughout their sixteen years, PUSA have gifted us with song after song filled with the catchiest, bounciest hooks. 

These Are The Good Times People continues the trend, and within seconds of album-opener ‘Mixed Up SOB’, everyone in listening-distance will be grinning. But just three minutes into their latest album, PUSA seem to suddenly take their collective foot off the pedal-on-the-right.

While the album is consistently chirpy, the pace is pretty obviously different to their other albums, including 2004’s Love Everybody. While the songs will undoubtedly keep everyone in the room smiling, the bounce seems to have slowed to a sway, and that signature sound seems to have faded. Instead, a huge chunk of the songs soung pretty… well… regular. Which, really, defeats the whole point of the Presidents.

There are certainly still some great moments on Good Times - ‘Bad Times’ is sentimental and soppy, in a hilarious way and ‘Truckstop Butterfly’ is as nonsensical as PUSA ever were, but it’s on ‘Ghosts Are Everywhere’ that the Seattle trio start to sound like the PUSA of old, with the huge, simpler-than-thou chorus. 

While the album as a whole is fun and almost every song gets in your head like Kurt Cobain’s last shotgun shell, there is now a polished sound that didn’t seem to be there before and a more-than-welcome number of almost acoustic sounding tracks. ‘So Lo So Hi’ sees the band again turn back to their signature sound, which seems to remain for the rest of the tracklist. By that time, the end of the album is in sight, but at least it was a fun journey, despite the new speed-limit.

Maybe PUSA are just growing old, but at least they’re still doing it with a smile on their face.

Rating: 7 out of 10 Beans

Tags: Music, Rock

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Albums, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.