Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers

After two albums of nearly flawless power-pop in the late ‘90s for Atlantic —think Matthew Sweet, the dBs, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies, the earlier, Chris Bell-era Big Star —that were good enough records to win them a loyal core following, but not successful enough as commodities to keep the band at Atlantic for their third release, Fountains of Wayne took a four-year hiatus. Now they’re back with ‘Welcome Interstate Managers,’ their third and best CD to date.

Songwriters Adam Schlesinger (nominated for an Oscar as the author of the title theme to Tom Hanks' rock'n'roll movie ‘That Thing You Do!’ ) and Chris Collingwood have matured as songwriters, branching out from the calculatedly-charming, meticulous guitar pop of their self-titled debut and and ‘Utopia Parkway’ (and a style still in evidence with ‘Welcome’ on tracks like “Mexican Wine,” "Bright Future in Sales," and the album’s first single "Stacy's Mom"), into jazzy, orchestrated pop ("Halley's Waitress"), Lennonesque psychedelic pop ("Supercollider"), and brokehearted Gram Parsons-style country-rock ("Hung Up On You").

With so much going for it, it’s relatively easy to overlook a couple of weak points. Though the songs are neat, straightforward and impeccably-crafted, other than some clever new stylistic devices, there’s any new musical territory explored here. "All Kinds of Time," the album’s one clear misstep, is a painfully overextended football cliché as metaphor for a rapidly advancing future as pop song and the minute-long final track “Yours and Mine” does little more than fill disc space that would otherwise have gone unused.

‘Welcome Interstate Managers’ is more of what the Fountains of Wayne do best, fulfilling the promise of the first two Fountains of Wayne albums, and it appears this is a band still on its upward arc if not necessarily ahead of the curve.

Matt Parks (October 26, 2003)