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Music reviews |
Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers
Hook-laden melodies, wry lyrics and very few throwaway tracks.
S-Curve Records
Release date: 6/10/03
Rating: A-1. Mexican Wine 3:22
2. Bright Future in Sales 3:06
3. Stacy's Mom 3:17
- (mp3 from S-Curve)
4. Hackensack 3:00
5. No Better Place 4:06
- (mp3 from S-Curve)
6. Valley Winter Song 3:34
7. All Kinds of Time 4:21
8. Little Red Light 3:34
9. Hey Julie 2:36
10. Halley's Waitress 3:35
11. Hung Up on You 3:58
12. Fire Island 2:56
13. Peace and Love 3:26
14. Bought for a Song 4:01
15. Supercollider 5:05
16. Yours and Mine 1:02
With their third album since a self-titled debut in 1996, New York’s Fountains of Wayne have hit the big time. This week, Welcome Interstate Managers is #3 on Billboard magazine’s “heatseekers” chart (whatever that means, exactly), having peaked at #1, led by heavy play for the “Stacy’s Mom” video (#1 on VH-1’s top 20, whatever that means). It’s rare to see a band playing good old-fashioned power-pop sell so well in the United States, a feat that has eluded many similarly catchy, hook-laden acts in recent years, from Matthew Sweet to the Posies to Teenage Fanclub.
But it’s well-deserved. From Chris Collingwood’s quirky, barely accompanied vocals before the band joins in on the first track, “Mexican Wine,” it’s clear that Welcome Interstate Managers is going to be a fun ride. Indeed, the first six or seven tracks – with a downtempo break for the sad, sweet “Hackensack” – cry out to be played loud while driving along an open highway (even though the 9-to-5-schlub protagonists of many of the album’s songs would more likely be crawling through traffic during their morning commute).
Not that the album runs out of gas after those first several tracks; Collingwood and co-songwriter Adam Schlesinger (also the bassist for Ivy) have many high points on a record crammed with sunny pop gems. “Stacy’s Mom,” perhaps the “Mrs. Robinson” of the 2000s, brilliantly evokes the circa-1981 Cars. The wistful “Valley Winter Song” will stay in your head for days. Acoustic strumming and punchy lyrics carry “Hey Julie” through 2 ½ blissful minutes, while “Supercollider” is a nugget of mid-90s Britpop that would do the Gallagher brothers proud.
True, some of the tracks just don’t work: “Little Red Light” and “Bought for a Song” grate after a few listens; “Hung Up On You” is a throwaway attempt at country-rock; listening to “Halley’s Waitress” is about as boring as waiting for an absent waitress in a lousy restaurant. But this is a common complaint in the age of the CD – in order to come close to that 74-minute maximum, quality control goes out the window as what would be an 11-song classic becomes merely a superlative 16-track disc.
Even some of the otherwise ho-hum tracks are saved by Collingwood and Schlesinger’s snappy, funny lyrics. “Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont / Open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant,” muses Collingwood in “Peace and Love.” “I gotta get my shit together / 'Cause I can't live like this forever,” resolves the main character in “Bright Future in Sales.” And you have to feel for the subject of “Mexican Wine,” who “used to fly for United Airlines,” then “got fired for reading High Times.”
It’s neither art nor poetry, but for giving us a set of near-perfect pop songs that mostly avoid slipping into VH-1 blandness, Welcome Interstate Managers earns a place among 2003’s top releases.
Fun fact: The group takes its name from a venerable yard-statuary emporium on route 46 in the north-Jersey hamlet of Wayne. (The store, a local landmark, was featured in at least one episode of The Sopranos.)
