Welcome Interstate Managers

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Album Information
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  • Artist: Fountains of Wayne (See All Albums by Fountains of Wayne)

  • Date Released: Mar 1, 2005

  • Genre: Alternative/Punk, Style: Alternative, Commercial Alternative, Indie Rock, Rock

  • Label: VIRGIN

  • Copyright: (P) 2003 Virgin Records America, Inc.

Total Tracks: 17   Total Length: 59:08

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Karen Schoemer

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Karen Schoemer hosts "The Schoemer Show" on WGXC 90.7 fm Hudson/Catskill and www.wgxc.org. She is the author of Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with '5...more »

05.18.11
These songwriting chops used to take a decade in the Brill Building to hone
2005 | Label: VIRGIN

It's charming the way Fountains of Wayne write songs about white-collar schlubs in dead-end suburbs, crunching numbers in anonymity while that cute girl from first period winds up in Hollywood. But on the Jersey boys' third and most successful album, empathy lurks behind the sarcasm. Dig past the post-Cars new-wave/grunge snark of the first few tracks — particularly the MILF anthem "Stacy's Mom," which hit the Top 40 charts thanks to an MTV video featuring a near-naked supermodel — and Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood start flaunting the kind of songwriting chops that used to require a decade in the Brill Building to hone. "All Kinds of Time" is the most sensitive ballad ever written about a football player spacing out during the crucial moment of the big pass. In "Valley Winter Song," bleak gray days become a metaphor for a pretty girl's vanishing youth. "Halley's Waitress" is such an unapologetic Burt Bacharach homage — moody piano chords, soul guitar licks, plucked violin strings, falsetto vocals — that it's as if Schlesinger and Collingwood are begging anyone to get the reference. "Stuck in a meeting on Monday night/ Trying to get the numbers to come out right," Collingwood… read more »

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Fans waiting for Fountains of Wayne to finally quit goofing around and release a sonically experimental, brooding collection of “serious music” are just going to have to keep waiting. Luckily, the number of their listeners hoping for anything besides another infectious batch of sunny singalong numbers from Adam Schlesinger, Chris Collingwood, and company is probably about the same as the number of people waiting for the White Stripes to record a smooth jazz record. On the mind-numbingly charming Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne do what they do best. And while they reinforce their reputation as the reigning deities of uptempo, big-guitar pop/rock with feel-good anthems like “Mexican Wine,” “Bright Future in Sales,” “Stacy’s Mom,” and “Little Red Light,” they also continue their proud tradition of mellow yet equally tongue-in-cheek tunes. While their debut album had “Sick Day” and “You Curse at Girls,” and Utopia Parkway featured “Prom Theme” and “The Senator’s Daughter,” Welcome Interstate Managers introduces “Fire Island,” a plea to be left home alone when the parents go on vacation, and “All Kinds of Time,” perhaps the best (and first) musical interpretation of a slow-motion football replay ever recorded. But the bouncing acoustic guitars of “Hey Julie” are definitely the high point. This time, the one flaw may simply be that the group doesn’t know when to say when. Their two previous releases closed with lazy ballads, and this time they build to a perfect finale with “Fire Island.” Unfortunately, they follow it with four more songs that add little to the quality of the album. Still, CD players were made with skip buttons for a reason, and too much material is usually preferable to too little. Even without the last four tracks, Welcome Interstate Managers had more than enough pitch-perfect melodies and smile-inducing lyrics to make it a defining album for the summer of 2003. And if that’s not your thing, well, maybe some winter they’ll finally put out that somber record you’ve been waiting for. – Mark Vanderhoff

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