How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Outstanding
Value for Money
Advantages:
Thoughtful, melodic, inventive songs
Disadvantages:
A couple of dumb thrash tracks
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Where would music critics be without genre pigeonholes? Like travellers without maps, I suspect. When Fountains of Wayne appeared, the points of reference could be plotted perfectly: short, tuneful songs plus grungy guitars equals... Power Pop. Read any review of the band or their music and you'll see this phrase. It says it all, yet it says nothing.
On the band's second album, Utopia Parkway (1999), you'll find the pretty songs and loud guitars, sure. But there are also witty lyrics, sophisticated arrangements, clever insights, lush vocal harmonies and an almost perfect rendition of what it is to be young in suburban America.
Fountains of Wayne are essentially songwriters Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood. Most people, if they've heard them at all, know their 1996 single 'Radiation Vibe'. The band seems to be a part-time outfit these days (the name, by the way, is taken from a fountain emporium* in the small town of Wayne in Collingwood's native New Jersey). Although a third album is expected in June 2003, most of the four members have other bands and projects. Schlesinger is in demand as a producer for others' records (Robert Plant and They Might Be Giants) and was Academy Award nominated for his title song for the Tom Hanks movie 'That Thing You Do'.
Back to those music critics, though. Despite the convenient pigeonholing, they had one thing right. When many of them compiled their 'best of 1999' lists, Utopia Parkway was high among them. They loved its wry songs - humorous without veering into novelty band territory - and the influences that spanned the Beach Boys and British pop from the 60s to the 80s. However, it deserves to be more than an eternal critics' secret.
The songs are affectionate yet knowing accounts of growing up. Literate without being obscure, they depict the glories and anxieties of youth with a mixture of warmth and ironic distance. After all, the band were in their early 30s when this album was made - and in New York rather than in its suburbs.
The song 'Red Dragon Tattoo' is a first-person story of a teenage boy plucking up courage to get a tattoo to impress a girl: "I'm fit to be dyed / Am I fit to have you?" With its puns and references ("Now I look a little more like that guy from Korn") it gently mocks, yet identifies with, its subject. Similarly, on 'Fine Day for a Parade' a lonely mother sits and drinks to escape her fears ("Clears up her head with bourbon / 'Cause beer is so suburban / And déclassé for what it's worth").
The sympathy in the lyrics never cloys; there's usually an ironic undertow to give the songs bite. The wistful cocktail of 'Prom Theme' is spiked with a sobering shot of reality: "Here we are at last / The moment soon will pass / We'll go our separate ways... We'll grow old and lose our hair / It's all downhill from there."
'Denise' is a swipe at love song conventions, the lyrics poking fun at the subject and his object of desire: "She drives a lavender Lexus / She lives in Queens but her dad lives in Texas". The choruses, with their sha-la-las, use pop clichés to point up the silliness of infatuation. The title song's tale of a small-time would-be rock musician, exposes the bathos of unrealistic teenage dreams ("I'll get some paper and a staple gun / And put my name in front of everyone").
There's the odd bum note. 'Laser Show', with its 70s glam rock guitars and knowingly dumb lyrics is, in movie terms, more 'Wayne's World' than 'The Last Picture Show'. 'Lost in Space' is another disposable thrash, portraying an airheaded girl with neither insight nor wit: "And I can't get through no matter what I do / But I love her anyway". These songs - although they are conceivably meant, Randy Newman-style, to present alien points of view from a first-person perspective - threaten to spoil the otherwise seamless flow of inventive melody and stylistic borrowings.
The styles range from Prom Theme's piano and mournful strings, to the frenetic drums, buzzing guitars and surfer harmonies of 'It must be Summer'. Most of the songs are decorated with loopy antique synthesiser sounds which acknowledge the band's debt to earlier eras of pop. Even the squalling fuzz guitars and wailing feedback on 'Go Hippie' are tempered by the loveliness of the melody in the chorus. Collingwood, as lead vocalist, does not have the most remarkable voice, and it has a slight whiny edge. But this is softened by layers of sumptuous vocal harmonies, reminiscent of classic 70s pop outfits like The Raspberries.
Despite being two- or three-minute blasts of pop brilliance, nearly all of the songs bear repeated listening - either for previously unnoticed lyrical barbs or the instrumental colourings. If you like the intelligent, melodic pop of, say, the Barenaked Ladies or Ben Folds, please don't deny yourself the pleasures of Fountains of Wayne. The band's major label, Atlantic, dropped them after this album. If that's not proof of its lasting worth, I don't know what is.
Track listing: 1. Utopia Parkway 2. Red Dragon Tattoo 3. Denise 4. Hat and Feet 5. The Valley of Malls 6. Troubled Times 7. Go, Hippie 8. A Fine Day for a Parade 9. Amity Gardens 10. Laser Show 11. Lost in Space 12. Prom Theme 13. It Must Be Summer 14. The Senator's Daughter
* thanks to Nick (member nfp2) for the info on the band's name
More details
How does it rate alongside the competition
Outstanding
Cover / Inlay Design and Content
Good
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focused on the suburbs of the City That Never Sleeps: the tree-lined streets populated by commuters and shopping malls that make up much of New Jersey, Connecticut an...
