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 :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more