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Fountains Of Wayne – Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart
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Fountains of Wayne were always a band that power pop fans and music critics wondered why they weren’t more famous. Until ironically they become one-hit-wonders for the novelty hit “Stacy’s Mom” but by that point I’d been listening to them for nearly a decade (since their 1996 debut). The album it came from “Welcome Interstate Managers” was good but seemed to be the band reaching their stylistic limits, with songs emcompassing 60s rock, country, 80s pop amongst others. With only a few stumbles (the Cars aping mega-single wears out its welcome quicker than most) it was a great summer album.
Their follow-up unfortunately was not as successful, both commercially and artistically. The band seemed to be trying to replicate the success of their previous album by redoing all of its songs except now the lyrics were too cute, too self conscious and at times, grating. And I thought for several years after that I might be done with them as a fan. On first listen of their latest, “Sky Full Of Holes” I thought, ‘This is an acceptable apology for “Traffic & Weather.”’ After a dozen more listens I’m convinced it’s also a great FOW album. They’ve scaled way back on trying to ape every genre of music and just written some plain, catchy songs. In other words, it’s vintage Fountains of Wayne and I’m happy to have them back.
