by Dan Pashman

Here's the video, featuring Demetri Martin from The Daily Show and actress Faryl Millet. For more on the band and the album, see below...

I put the latest Fountains of Wayne disc Traffic and Weather on in my apartment the other day, let it play for a while, and asked my wife what she thought. "It's good," she replied, "but it's a little more pop-y than the stuff you usually like." She's right on both fronts. It is poppier than the stuff I usually like, and it is good.

The catchiness may draw you in, but it's the juxtaposition of a bubble gum aesthetic and acidic lyrics, delivered with deadpan pop glee, that makes the music stand out. This album, along with FoW's previous effort, Welcome Interstate Managers, is to music what Office Space is to movies. Just beneath the veneer of fun there's a brutal depiction of cubicle living as a breeding ground for isolation and frustration, complete with traffic jams, long lines, lost luggage, lost souls, and power-tripping middle managers.

 

Traffic and Weather deals in the mundane, with songs like "Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim" and the track featured in this post, "Someone to Love," which depicts the parallel lives of thirty-somethings Seth Shapiro and Beth McKenzie. Frontman Chris Collingwood sings, "It's Thursday night she should be out on the scene/ but she's sitting at home watching the King of Queens/ She takes the contacts out of her eyes/ Sets the alarm for 6:45, so she can get a little exercise." But in spite of the catchy sound and riding high hat (is there ever too much riding high hat?), the song ends with Beth leaving Seth for dead.

It's not all bad news on Traffic and Weather, however. There's enough real affection for the prosaic to give it some heart. Case in point is "Yolanda Hayes," a paean to the ubiquitous person behind the ubiquitous counter at the front of the long lines that all the technology in the world seems not to have alleviated.

But while I'm fully comfortable with, indeed impressed by, FoW's juxtaposition of lofty sound and mundane lyrics, I'm not sure the band itself is so self-assured. When I saw them in concert, it seemed their own identity crisis was mirrored by the varied constituencies in the crowd. There were teenage girls who wanted their Top 40, clearly drawn in by FoW's vapid hit song, "Stacy's Mom." Then there was a contingent of longtime fans, and people like me who had just learned about them, but were interested in more than the hits.

The band clearly couldn't decide who they were playing to, and in their attempts to please everyone, they fell somewhat flat. The band's clothes (glam rock hand-me-downs) and the guitarist's faux-metal histrionics screamed teeny bopper, even as they sang sardonic songs like "Bright Future In Sales." Then at one point they said they were going to do something they'd "been messing around with at sound check." They proceeded to play the music of "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes, while singing the lyrics of "Oh Sherrie," by Journey frontman Steve Perry. I thought it was hilarious, and it kinda worked, but most of the crowd seemed dumbfounded. Half of them didn't know the White Stripes, the other half didn't know "Oh Sherrie."

Combining music filled with hooks and lyrics filled with pathos isn't easy, and I'm sure that the calculation isn't solely artistic. After all, hooks sell records. And they got my wife to listen. But attempting to be all things to all people is a recipe for mediocrity, and while it works wonderfully on the albums, the live show isn't there yet. Call me a crankpot, but I wish Fountains of Wayne would give up on the teenagers, not just because I'm not one anymore. We thirty-somethings are just as deserving of good hooks. We still get in the left lane, roll down the windows, and sing along. And those lyrics are wasted on the youngsters.