Fountains of Wayne


I started out doing a snarky gloomy review just to finish out the list, but it's such a lovely morning and the self-titled debut from Fountains of Wayne is such a great album that i have no gloom left with which to doom us. Instead we'll lose the monkey and not slouch so much. 

Radiation Vibe after Lit's A Place In The Sun, that's pretty good unintentional review flow. Fountains of Wayne is not from Indiana, they're from NYC and it was the name of a lawn ornament store in New Jersey. They considered lots of other silly names, but eventually everyone accepted it. 

Oh yeah, i honestly forgot how good their self-titled debut is. Sadly, we lost Adam to Covid, but i don't think he'd want us to dwell on that. This, to me, is proper Power Pop. It's happy, it's fun, Alt-Rock was the mainstream at the time, and these guys are just so nerdily likable. It also doesn't have Stacey's Mom on it, because that was from their 3rd album in 2003, but it does have an entire list of great songs from start to finish. Album flow wise, we start out with really strong pop hits everyone can get behind, coast through the middle with some great Alt-Rock thinkers, at times very reminiscent of Hum to my ears, decide we aren't in the mood to get rocked tonight, and end with a lovely 50s slow dance about how delicate this moment of loveliness actually is. 

Not much else to say, really. It's a fantastic album, just shut up and enjoy it :)

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