It might be fair to call me a huge Fountains of Wayne fan. Ever since I first heard Leave the Biker, I was hooked on their geek rock unabashed pop janglings. I like them so much I didn't get annoyed at the rampant overexposure of Stacy's Mom.
So it is with some disappointment that I offer this mini-review of their new record. It is well, fine. There is nothing particularly wrong with it. I don't reach for the trackwheel when a song comes on.
Normally lyrics are not the key to a great song for me. It's the hooks, man. I once read a review of the Gourds that said they could make reading the phone book soulful. Exactly. But FOW seems to have gone one step too far in cataloguing the mundane. They have become the mundane. The hooks are there, and a few clever turns of phrase ("ooh, we belong together/like traffic and weather"), but I'm not moved.
Maybe a few more listens will bring me around, but mostly it makes me want to listen to the older stuff. OK, now I sound like every musical curmudgeon, so I'll stop.
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1 comment:
I too love FoW. The video for Stacey's Mom is, in a word, awesome. I'm sorry to hear that the latest CD isn't also awesome. Still, mediocre FoW is head and shoulders above most contemporary pop.
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