Fountains Of Wayne - Traffic And Weather Album Review

Fountains Of Wayne
Traffic and Weather
Album Review

Fountains of Wayne are the masters of the sarky three minute pop song, a smiling sideswipe slice of sugar that hides edgy observational humour (or bemusement), who will be remembered for a long time for Stacey's Mom from Welcome Interstate Managers. That song itself, while one of the best songs in the charts for ages, wasn't where you'd normally find FoW - it showed them drifting closer to the sarcastic rock of Weezer.

Traffic and Weather finds them back on more familiar ground - more sweet pop, and short story snapshots (Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim) perfectly told via unusual observation, or the lies people tell themselves (Strapped for Cash). This is a wry, literate, pop-culture literate album, but the cleverness never becomes overweaning - this isn't Michael Stipe patronising, Bono preaching or Sting being a better person than you. Fountains of Wayne include you in the stories. There's no Stacey's Mom here, but it is classic power pop album.

4/5

Mike Rea