Album Review: FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE.

TRAFFIC AND WEATHER

Fountains of Wayne

Virgin Records

           

Fountains of Wayne, you have disappointed me.

 

            Traffic and Weather is their new album, and it is a decidedly mixed bag. 2003’s Welcome Interstate Managers seemed to find a perfect balance between witty humor, adolescent reflection, and psychedelia. Last year I interviewed Chris Collingwood, the band’s front man. In response to a question on his writing songs for the follow-up, he was blunt: “I’m getting more serious, sadder, more political and angry. That’s probably either the era we live in or middle age.” Buzz was created for the eventual follow-up; it could’ve been a classic album about teenage life in suburbia, or even a shift towards political themes. Instead, this album is lighthearted to the point of blandness, so Collingwood didn’t have his way. But I’ll get back to that later.

“Someone To Love” kicks the record off. The song’s chorus hangs on the disco-era synth that permeates the record, and its intentions are made clear: it is “Stacy’s Mom” redux, and it is doomed to fail. “Stacy’s Mom”, though a great song, was a fluke; the rhyming chorus, backed with the titillating music video, made it a hit. In contrast, the best part in “Someone To Love” is its Beatlesesque bridge, and I’m not quite sure that’s enough to make it a hit. The pop culture references found within the song date it and degrade its long-lasting appeal. Coldplay and The King of Queens are sung about, with the former’s last album already two years old and the latter having its series finale in a couple weeks. Thanks to Chris Martin’s songwriting, Coldplay has a chance of being worth a damn in forty years, but the King of Queens? I don’t think so.

I’m not saying this is a bad album. The word bad connotes shoddy songwriting, which is not the case. The problem lies in the fact that most of the songs feel like commercial jingles. Among the following companies referenced: Subaru, Greenpeace, The Gap, Costco, and Doritos. Verses rife with iPod-generation pop culture culminate in uncatchy choruses (“This better be good / oh this better be good”, “I’m just a little strapped for cash”, “I’m just looking for a new routine”, etc.). “’92 Subaru” has a nice guitar line, and most songs on the album have some nice soloing near the end. But “Planet of Weed” may be the album’s biggest offender. The band has always skewed on the corny side, but this song ups the factor to cringe-worthy proportions. It’s saved only by a reference to Oliver Stone, bringing two Hill school alumni together in a song about reefer.

All of the above songs were written by Adam Schelsinger, who has made a side career out of writing disposable schlock for film and television. His credits include That Thing You Do! and the recent Hugh Grant vehicle Music & Lyrics. He may be musically talented, but lyrics like those from “Traffic and Weather” are painful: “Don't run away baby, hear what I say / You know I sit here reading to you day after day / Don't be scared, sit back down in your chair / All I want to do is just stroke your hair / Ooh, we belong together / Like traffic and weather.” What does that even mean? Weather affects traffic, but it itself is not really dependent on traffic at all. Cars release carbon-dioxide, affecting the ozone? I’m probably looking too much into it, which is the problem of most of this album’s songs. As you try to look further into them, you realize that you’re staring at an empty shell.  

To me, Chris Collingwood is Fountains of Wayne. He started the band and was the primary songwriter on their first album. Now, he dominates the band in vocals only. On Traffic and Weather, he has written only three of the fourteen songs, though they constitute the album’s highlights. You wouldn’t know this from the liner notes: The band takes the Lennon-McCartney approach to crediting, listing both men as the writers of each song. But, like later-period Beatles, each song is dominantly the work of either songwriter (I found out who wrote what through a recent interview).

Collingwood’s songs save the album from being the album equivalent of a Happy Meal. “Fire In The Canyon” is a country song which displays organ, piano, and acoustic guitar that contrasts Schlesinger’s disco-dreck. His voice soars on the chorus, and the harmonies on the verses are pop perfection. He offers up some of the album’s best lyrics: “Well I'll ride the motorway / For a thousand miles a day / ’Til the road runs out of blacktop / Or I will this world away / And each town is steeped in rain / And I know each one by name / Cause this road is wrapped around me / And I wear it like a chain.” “Hotel Majestic” is his second offering, and it feels like a return to Fountains of Wayne’s first two albums. Punchy guitars and piano complement lyrics about people stuck with nothing to do but lounge around, a common theme in the band’s earlier work. Collingwood has hinted at plans to record a solo country album, and I’m looking forward to it more than the next FoW release. “Seatbacks and Traytables” is his third song, and it ends the album on a wistful note. The acoustic guitar and harmonica evoke Dylan, and the lyrics appear to be the only ones that don’t take a Ray Davies approach (songs about other people’s lives). It is about the rigors of travel, how each city seems to blend into the next in a haze. “New city, same stuff”, he sings; “New album, same stuff” is what I hear.