Welcome Interstate Managers

Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne.

I often find myself baffled by fads in pop music. I mean, I sort of understand how you end up with a million sound-alike bands once one band in a given genre scores a hit, but I can't fathom why the first hair metal band hit it big, or the first "boy band," or that whole disco thing.

Even more puzzling to me, though, is why some albums fail to sell. My favorite example of this would be 1965 by the Afghan Whigs-- that record just kicks ass, and should've sold a billion copies. Why it didn't, I have no idea.

Close behind 1965 in the "How was this not a hit?" category is Utopia Parkway by Fountains of Wayne. It's got everything you could possibly want in a pop record: big hooks, catchy tunes, witty lyrics, and suburban angst. And yet, it sank more or less without a trace, and the band was booted from their label. Go figure.

You've got to give them credit for persistence, though, as Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger (Williams alumni from the mid-80's) are back with Welcome Interstate Managers, which might just as easily be titled Utopia Parkway 2.0. They've updated the themes a little bit-- the angst is still suburban, but it's more a 9-to-5, corporate-tool kind of deal than the last album's Long-Island-mall-rat vibe-- but all the rest of the package is there: the big hooks, the catchy tunes, the witty lyrics ("It may be the whiskey talking/ But the whiskey says I miss you every day."). You can even draw some fairly direct parallels between tracks--"Fire Island" on this record is "Prom Theme" from the last one, "Little Red Light" is "It Must Be Summer," and "Stacy's Mom" is "Denise" re-tooled for the American Pie demographic. And, alas, "Supercollider" is "Go, Hippie." It's almost like they can't believe the last one didn't sell, either, and are putting it out there again.

Article Author: Chad Orzel

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