<\/place>Jersey-centric, average-Joe, character-driven, steadfastly retro guitar pop, going large in terms of public awareness had to be a weird experience.\u00a0 And the punchline to their success was that \u201cStacy\u2019s Mom,\u201d for all its hooky, witty wonderfulness, wasn\u2019t even close to being the best track on WIM<\/i>.<\/p>\nSo what do they do for an encore?\u00a0 What they do best, of course.\u00a0 Fourteen more three-minute vignettes populated with original points of view, laugh-out-loud rhymes, fat guitar hooks, sing-along choruses and circa-1979 synthesizers.<\/p>\n
As on WIM<\/i>, the changes in tone, style and character voice can be dizzying, but never fail to entertain.\u00a0 Lead single \u201c\u201992 Subaru\u201d is an instant classic, fat fuel-injected guitars and retro synths pumping up the delusional gearhead narrator who\u2019s certain his tricked-out Subie is his ticket to score-dom.\u00a0 And who but FoW would even think to write a song (\u201cYolanda Hayes\u201d) about flirting with a stone-faced DMV clerk?\u00a0 With a snazzy trumpet solo, yet?<\/p>\n
\u201cRevolving Dora\u201d is another piece of confectionary brilliance, a spot-on musical pastiche of Revolver<\/i>-era Beatles, natch, that pays homage while spooling out subversively clever lines like \u201cShe\u2018s in her own rotating world \/ There\u2019s something blurry about that girl.\u201d\u00a0 Other classic character sketches include the aforementioned horny anchors in \u201cTraffic And Weather,\u201d the exquisitiely smarmy loan shark customer who\u2019s \u201cStrapped For Cash,\u201d and the emotionally drained travelers of \u201cMichael And Heather At The Baggage Claim\u201d and \u201cSeatbacks And Traytables.\u201d <\/p>\n
After six or seven listens, though, I have to say my favorite track of the moment is \u201cNew Routine,\u201d whose winding chain-reaction narrative builds and flows from character to character, verse to verse, a beautifully realized illustration of how people at different places in their lives react to boredom and wanderlust.\u00a0 Pretty insightful stuff for an album that also features \u201cPlanet Of Weed\u201d \u2013 though admittedly, even that shambling ode to life under the influence has its moments of strange poignancy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As always, on track after track Chris Collingwood (lead vocals, guitar), Adam Schlesinger (bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals, production), Jody Porter (guitar, vocals) and Brian Young (drums) find new sounds and musical attitudes to hit you with; these are musical chameleons of the first order.\u00a0 As songwriters, Collingwood and Schlesinger have never been craftier or more melodic.<\/p>\n
As far as practical considerations, though, the question is obvious: is there anything on this album as viscerally memorable as \u201cStacy\u2019s Mom\u201d?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 But is that a bad thing?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 No need to share this thoroughly original cast of characters with the unwashed masses, half of whom wouldn\u2019t get the jokes anyway.\u00a0 Let them keep right on gobbling up the latest American Idol<\/i> reject; they\u2019re getting exactly what they deserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6919],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-40230","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-fountains-of-wayne","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40230"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40230"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}