Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 07/05/07
Label: Virgin

It's been eleven years since New Jersey boys Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood launched a career built on power-pop, droll couplets about doleful Generation Xers, generally good reviews and generally woeful sales; just four years since the unexpectedly massive hit "Stacey's Mom", buoyed by a chorus as knowingly bodacious as Rachel Hunter in the accompanying video. Fast-forward to 2007, past hiatuses and side projects and Schlesinger becoming The Man when Hollywood needs fictional hit songs for Hugh'n'Drew rom-coms.

The unadorned truth is that Fountains Of Wayne's fourth album, "Traffic And Weather", offers neither real surprises for the faithful nor a sure-fire candidate for another hit (and lubricious promo clip.) It also fails to offer much respite to those who come out in a rash at FOW's tendency to lard songs with cultural references of almost microscopic specificity; here we get Schenectady, La Quinta Inns, Costco, the I95, Sea Bright, Bowling Green and the names of NBC's Channel 6 news anchors. In fact, if Schlesinger and Collingwood were any more indigenous, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would be slow-roasting them.

Nevertheless, unless you're one of the allergic, there's little not to love. Crucially, "Traffic And Weather" sounds fantastic: every track has a dashboard-glow of pure AM magic, thanks to production so bright and unrepentantly shiny you could check your teeth for spinach in it. As on past efforts, it's the pop album as a series of masterfully arranged lucky dips. "92 Subaru" is a cowbell-clanging fusion of Steve Miller and Nick Lowe; "This Better Be Good" blossoms into Beach Boys harmonies all the lovelier for their incongruity; the ELO-ish "Strapped For Cash" adds cheeky flashes of Billy Joel's "Movin' Out" and M's "Pop Muzik"; "Hotel Majestic" boasts five stars' worth of Cars synths and handclaps.

And, hinting that even the throwaways were plotted with mischievous care, "Planet Of Weed" grins its way through guitar doodles, muffled chatter and off-kilter percussion supplied by what sounds suspiciously like car keys. With sounds this luscious, the wry lyrics are merely a bonus. You'll find neat little lines about elderly Carl Reiner lookalikes spending their retirement winding up waitresses in a soaraway "New Routine", and the new-wave-flavoured "Someone To Love" painstakingly provides back-stories for Coldplay-loving singletons clearly destined to "meet cute" … but then she nicks his taxi, and they don't.

But the real secret to "Traffic And Weather"'s charm lies in what Collingwood's technically unremarkable voice does with those clever words, taking infinite care, in songs such as a wearily countrified "Seatbacks And Traytables", to imbue every syllable with flickers of sarcasm, resignation, self-deception, tenderness...and even hope. Which is apparently somewhere near Schenectady.

    by Jennifer Nine