Harvey Danger
King James Version
(London/Sire)
***

TWO YEARS AGO, Seattle's Harvey Danger and the Presidents of the United States of America were everywhere you listened. The Presidents had built a considerable local following in the years prior, and released two huge records of jokey, "cute" songs that were sometimes deliciously catchy: "She's lump, she's lump, she's lump, she's in my head...." The Presidents knew exactly what they were about and never overstepped their boundaries, a party band built on sheer word of mouth, until one day they were "Naked and Famous," though they still felt truly local.

Harvey Danger, on the other hand, were catapulted from obscurity by their single "Flagpole Sitta," a song so catchy that it will still conjure up the year 1998 to retirees in the year 2050. The band had played around town, but to no significant notice, and their irritating second single, "Private Helicopter'" was all the proof I believed I needed that this band had nothing to offer. The better songs buried in their first record hinted at their potential, but they never shook the mannerisms of Pavement, to whom Sean Nelson's spazzy/acerbic, cavalier/sad persona still owes its parentage.

On King James Version, however, Nelson develops facets that are entirely his own. Ladies and gentlemen of a certain age might be reminded of "serious" pop records like Copper Blue or Ritual de lo Habitual. On the opener, "Meetings with Remarkable Men (Show Me the Hero)," Nelson hoots, hollers, and gets bitchy, like a young Elvis Costello by way more of Jerry Lee Lewis than the Jerry Lewis of Harvey Danger's past. His verbal missiles deliver a weight they lacked before: "I bowed before the avatar/ He said, 'The problem's clear to me: you never got over Morrissey'/I said, 'Well, right you are!'/'It's harder to be underfed than under-understood,' he said." Nelson plays several other gems ("You Miss the Point Completely I Get the Point Exactly'" "Authenticity'" "Loyalty Bldg.") closer to his sleeve, but the first hit single will probably be the lesser and radio-friendly "Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo." The heart of the CD is "Pike St./Park Slope," an ironic but moving ode to trustafarian hopes and aimlessness ("Maybe we can run away and start a little repertory movie house or something"), sung over piano and cello. The last song on the record would be entirely at home on a Quasi album. Harvey Danger are a kind of Blink 182 with brains, demonstrating that their attitude is only a front for tenderness.

While the pleasure I took from Harvey Danger's new CD was something of a shock, I was surprised by the actual existence of a new Presidents record. Apparently, when the band's members recorded some tracks earlier this year for Subset (their collaboration with Sir Mix-A-Lot), there was other material ready to go, so the tapes kept rolling. The record is propelled along by several up-tempo songs ("Tiny Explosions," "Tiger Bomb"), as lively as the first song on the Harvey Danger CD. I don't know whether the material actually deteriorates or if it's just that frivolity fatigue sets in, but by the time one reaches "Last Girl on Earth" and "I'm Mad," this disc has become aural wallpaper. The problem for me is that the Presidents' inoffensive but skillful output offers no real intensity--no passion, revelation; really none of the things I go to music for.

To their credit, the Presidents certainly can't be said to be "cashing in." Two years after their gracefully timed farewell show at the Paramount, nobody was exactly clamoring for their return. Perhaps the Presidents are simply doing what they want to do now--past their former surreal fame, with no apparent plans to tour in support of the record, the Presidents are now a band on the radio, in CD shrink-wrap, relative to nowhere specifically.

It's almost as if these two bands have switched places. And I just keep playing Harvey Danger's record over and over now because I like it.