A supergroup album always emerges with the same question hanging over it: which is more entertaining and\/or impressive \u2013 the idea of the band, or the actual music they produce?<\/p>\n
Tinted Windows\u2019 parts are nothing if not impressive — at least, if you\u2019re a power-pop geek like me.\u00a0 Fountains Of Wayne bassist\/songwriter\/producer Adam Schlesinger had been pals with New Jersey neighbor and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha for years, to the point where the two co-founded an indie label and went in on shared studio space in Manhattan.\u00a0 Somewhere along the trail, \u00a0Schlesinger also befriended Taylor Hanson (yes, THAT Hanson), and the two talked off and on about doing something together.\u00a0 When the three friends finally decided the moment was upon them, they knew they needed a drummer who would be in sync with the punchy, technicolor guitar-pop style they had in mind.\u00a0 \u201cWho do we know who can play like Bun E. Carlos?\u201d Hanson remembers someone asking, musing on the drummer-for-life of power-pop legends Cheap Trick.\u00a0 Eventually they realized they had nothing to lose by calling Carlos himself… and lo and behold, he was into it.<\/p>\n
The end result feels — for an admitted Fountains fanatic like yours truly — a bit like FoW with a hefty helping of glammy swagger added to the mix.\u00a0 Schlesinger\u2019s trademark clever rhymes, tight rhythms and classic-pop \u201coh-oh-ohs\u201d are all there, but the whole experience has both a rich pop sheen (Hanson) and a muscular thump (Iha) that take the music in a distinctly different direction.\u00a0 If I had to name a single band these guys sound the most like, it would probably be\u2026 drumroll, please\u2026 Cheap Trick.<\/p>\n
Nowhere is this more evident than on the kickoff track and no-brainer first single \u201cKind Of A Girl.\u201d\u00a0 Catchy as Velcro and propulsive as a cruise missile, this cut also finds young Hanson belting out his lead vocals in a style that sounds closer to Robin Zander than anything I\u2019ve heard from his family-business band.\u00a0 Iha backs up this impression with frenetic, pealing Rick Nielsen riffage and Schlesinger\u2019s fingerprints are all over the power-pop-perfection arrangement.<\/p>\n
Next up, \u201cMessing With My Head\u201d cages another slashing Iha riff inside crisp production and an achingly familiar retro-pop arrangement.\u00a0 \u201cBack With You\u201d starts out feeling like a fairly by-the-numbers power ballad, with Taylor at his dreamy Hanson-est on the verses, but is almost immediately elevated by Iha\u2019s expansive guitars and the arena-scale production.\u00a0 \u201cCan\u2019t Get A Read On You\u201d is a burning rocker that finds Iha and the rhythm section pushing Hanson harder yet, though it\u2019s still solidly in the power-pop vein.\u00a0 In between, \u201cDead Serious\u201d leans to the sugary side of the equation and feels like a Hanson contribution, but when Iha\u2019s guitar surges forward it\u2019s a force of nature. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kicking off another notable trio of songs later on, \u201cCha Cha\u201d is a dirty-simple Keith Richards riff dropped into a Raspberries single, one of those songs that\u2019s impressive not so much for anything it says or does, but the way the guys play it, i.e. like they\u2019re just digging the groove and vamping it up every second.\u00a0 Carlos batters his snare and cymbals into submission backing Iha\u2019s fat leads on the again very Cheap Trick-ish \u201cWe Got Something.\u201d\u00a0 And Hanson tries to give a little attitude at the mike on \u201cNothing To Me\u201d and has a hard time selling it with his honey-sweet voice and earnest delivery — but kudos for trying; the kid still sounds like he\u2019s having a blast.<\/p>\n
In the end it must be said — returning to my original frame of reference — that these songs lack both the quirky characters and the rich emotional subtext of your typical Fountains Of Wayne disc.\u00a0 I doubt any of the four principals will ever regard these tracks as the pinnacle of their creative portfolio.\u00a0 But are they entertaining?\u00a0 Oh HELL yeah.\u00a0 In that sense this album sounds pretty much exactly like what it is — a quartet of power-pop demigods throwing a party in their clubhouse and inviting us in to listen.<\/p>\n
[Six-weeks-later addendum: can’t… stop… playing… album… too catchy… too fun… must raise grade from B+ to A-…] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8384],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41471","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tinted-windows","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41471","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=41471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41471"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}