Fountains Of Wayne - Disc of the day

Fountains Of Wayne
Welcome Interstate Managers

(S-Curve/Virgin, 2003)

Grown men channel their adolescence via super-streamlined power-pop.

In the nicest possible way, Massachusetts's power-poppers Fountains Of Wayne have been making the same album over and over since 1996. Yet what they lack in musical experimentation they make up for in their ability to maintain - beautifully. This, their third, is as diverse and as good as it gets. Core members/guitarists Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger had put the band on hold after 1999's second album Utopia Parkway. Schlesinger went off and wrote songs for the musical comedy Josie And The Pussycats; Collingwood fronted a group called The Gay Potatoes. The band reconvened for Welcome Interstate Managers: 16 artful, glorious songs that seem to back into each other leaving no room to pause and take stock. There's the pin-sharp rock of Bright Future In Sales and Little Red Light (tracks that comfortably whip such would-be competitors from the time as Blink-182), Hey Julie, a Simon & Garfunkel soundalike that could have soundtracked a romantic interlude in Dawson's Creek, and the hit single Stacy's Mom, a self-confessed homage to The Cars, sold with a promo video that distracted viewers from the Fountains' terminal geekiness by casting the soon to be ex-Mrs Rod Stewart, Rachel Hunter, in the titular role. The greatest testament to the band's intrinsically knowing way with a melody comes with Fire Island, a tale of hormone-addled adolescents planning to "drink all the alcohol" and "get naked in the pool" while their parents enjoy a weekend away. Somehow, you forget that the men voicing the hopes and dreams of these beer-drinking, skinny-dipping teens are, in real life, all the wrong side of thirty. Fountains Of Wayne make it sound and seem so easy.

Mark Blake

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 11/06/2008

Further Listening

The Cars – The Cars (Elektra, 1978)

The Replacements – Let It Be (Twin-Tone, 1984)

Fountains Of Wayne – Traffic And Weather (Virgin, 2007)

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With reference to the comment that FoW keep making the same record over again, I think it’s important to note that they’re a songs band, not an album band. As such, I’m not sure that judging them by now-traditional rock standards, that is by the strength of their musical range from album to album, applies all that well. They are a bit of a throwback that way, and I was glad at the time to hear “Stacy’s Mom” on the radio at the time, because that’s the kind of band they were always meant to be – a radio singles band. I add this to the list of reasons to mourn the way radio used to be – fun, unexpected, and not run by accountants. Cult band that they are now, Fountains of Wayne would have killed in 1976-1980.

Having said this, I love the record as a whole, which hangs together better than other albums before it. So, the fan looking for a great album from these guys wouldn’t misstep by starting here. The recent one – Traffic & Weather – is just as good, mind.

Posted by Clippernolan at 5:13 PM GMT 11/06/2008 Report Abuse

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Their best album so far! I hate to use the term but they are "old school" song craftsman. And I love that about them!

Posted by Phil Dutra at 2:39 AM GMT 02/07/2008 Report Abuse

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