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Feature: Jack Foley
NEW York-based quartet, Fountains of Wayne, have earned themselves
a reputation as masters of the three and a half minute pop song.
Led by songwriters, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, the
band has now released its third album, Welcome Interstate Managers,
following the success of their eponymous debut, and Utopia
Parkway.
Their latest, however, finds them tackling such time-honoured
pop subjects as love, work, frustrated commuters, drunken salesmen,
retired airline pilots, pressured quarterbacks, bad waitresses,
vegan entrepreneurs, New England snowstorms and exploding cell
phones... all the things we love about modern life and, well,
America.
But rather than doing it in a brash, pop-punk, Eighties-styled
kind of way, much like most of the other sounds coming out of
the Big Apple at the moment, the Fountains of Wayne - which also
includes Jody Porter, on guitars, and Brian Young, on drums -
are content to draw in wider influences, while almost sounding
as though they belong on California's West Coast.
Collingwood and Schlesinger say they began playing music together
in college, 'sometime in the previous century'.
They performed together in a series of bands, with names such
as Are You My Mother? and Threen Men Who When Standing Side By
Side Have A Wingspan of Over Twelve Feet.
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At one point in the early Nineties, they even began work on an
album for a start-up indie label, which soon folded, and the album
was never finished or released.
They claim to be quite grateful for this, in hindsight!
After a brief respite, the duo reconvened to New York, and formed
Fountains of Wayne around an inspired batch of new songs.
They named their new group after a lawn ornament store in Wayne,
NJ, near Schlesinger's hometown of Montclair (the store has since
gained notoriety thanks to multiple appearances on HBO's The Sopranos).
Although the debut album from Fountains of Wayne was recorded
largely as a duo, Peter (formerly of The Belltower) and Young
(formerly of The Posies) joined shortly before the record's release
in 1996.
The subsequent radio and TV success of songs like Radiation
Vibe and Sink To The Bottom kept the foursome on the
road for over a year.
Utopia Parkway followed in 1999 and was a collection
of songs set in and around the Tri-State Area which expanded the
band's fanbase both at home and abroad, and showed up on dozens
of year end 'best of' lists.
After a lengthy hiatus, however, the band is now back with Welcome
Interstate Managers, which was produced with longtime collaborator,
Mike Denneen, and which features guest appearances by former Smashing
Pumpkin, James Iha, and Boston-based singer-songwriter, Jen Trynin,
among others.
In addition to the trademark Fountains of Wayne power-pop sound,
there is also a newfound acoustic intimacy and hints of 60s psychedelia,
and even a country influence.
The album is well worth a listen.
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