Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven





	[quote name="Fullofkittens"]Got the new FoW album (<i>Welcome Interstate Managers</i>) a few days ago. <i>WIM</i> is a sort of loose concept album about your life, assuming that your life is like mine was a year ago. Specifically, all the songs are about what it's like to be an office slave while trying to stay rock, or maybe not so rock. If you're an office worker in NYC, it's exactly about your life, as songwriter extraordinaire Adam Schlesinger also includes even more than his customary number of NYC landmark references. One of the creepiest/greatest moments of my first listen to the record occurred during "Little Red Light," where he describes being stuck at the Tappan Zee and whistling because he has no radio - which was <b>exactly</b> what I was doing less than 12 hours before I heard the song. So, that's my bias towards the record. If you're not familiar with Fountains of Wayne what do they sound like? Well, there was a solid 8 years there where Weezer didn't put out any records, and that left a gap that needed filled. They have the crunchy guitars and the twenty-something-but-cutesy lyrics, minus the creepy pedophilia and uncomfortable self-loathing that both made Weezer's <i>Pinkerton</i> sort of hard to take while giving it an unexpected depth. Fountains of Wayne, in general, is as catchy as Weezer but doesn't rock out as hard and doesn't have a dark edge. They're funner. So, how's the new record? It starts off with "Mexican Wine," which is both FoW's BEST SONG SO FAR (truly, better than anything on their previous two records, in terms of complexity, catchiness, and production value - all just fantastic) and kicks off the career-related theme with its last verse, which nails the wistful but not-very-angsty tone of the record: "I used to fly for United Airlines/but I got fired, for reading High Times/my license expired in almost no time/now I'm retired." The 2nd song "Bright Future In Sales" is a good song they've been trying to write for years unsuccessfully - a bouncy fast song that doesn't die on the vine (like the just-okay "Survival Car" and the also-just-okay "Lost In Space"). It's good, but it does suffer from the Fountains of Wayne Guitar Solo Syndrome, in which they, as always, take it down several notches with a boring, poorly mixed and erroneously conceived guitar solo. Oh well. They're still pitching a no-hitter here. Third song: "Stacy's Mom." Where "Mexican Wine" was the best song in their career, if you listen to the album in sequence, it is quickly deposed by "Stacy's Mom." Not only is this song the best FoW has EVER DONE, it's also better than anything on any Weezer record but the blue one. 10 seconds in, where the repeated couplet "Stacy's Mom/has got it goin' on" gets supported by some 808 handclaps, I was saying "Fuck yes... fuck yes..." By the end, where they're dropping wicked Rick Springfield styles and singing 3-part harmony "STACY'S MOM - AH-AHHHHHHHH-AH!" it was all I could do not to jump up from my bus seat and make a "Touchdown" sign with my arms. YES! Fourth song "Hackensack" is a decent slow one about a friend that got famous and moved away. At this point, <i>Welcome Interstate Managers</i> is the best pop rock record since the blue album. It's better than Matthew Sweet's <i>Girlfriend</i>. I can't believe it. Then the 5th song comes and they hit a brick wall. "No Better Place" is pretty crappy. Very depressing, considering the circumstances. There are some other good songs (standouts: "Valley Winter Song" is beautiful and employs a really innovative texture that's folky but with a lot of very modern flourishes like subtle sine-y synths; "Hey Julie" is as good as "Mexican Wine" in a different way), but the momentum never comes back. Shit. What starts out as one of the best records I own ends up being not even as good as their previous album <i>Utopia Parkway</i>. Oh well. Worth getting for less than $10. Buy or steal "Stacy's Mom" immediately, you can't live without this song. FoK[/quote]