Fountains Of Wayne - Sky Full Of Holes Review

Posted by Wyatt E. on 08.02.2011

Boy, speaking of underrated bands.....

Before I start, here's Norm McDonald telling a really long-winded joke. By the way, don't tell this joke to people who are actually depressed.




1. The Summer Place - 3:31
2. Richie And Ruben - 3:32
3. Acela - 3:13
4. Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart - 3:54
5. Action Hero - 4:00
6. A Dip In The Ocean - 3:35
7. Cold Comfort Flowers - 4:26
8. A Road Song - 3:04
9. Workingman's Hands - 2:39
10. Hate To See You Like This - 4:14
11. Radio Bar - 2:56
12. Firelight Waltz - 3:14
13. Cemetery Guns - 2:54

Sometimes I feel like power pop - hell, good old fashioned guitar-based pop in general - is a style that works brilliantly, but never seems to top the charts as much as it should. I mean, yeah, there's Cheap Trick and Barenaked Ladies and (for Canada, anyway) Sloan, but those guys are now starting to seem like icons of an era passed in the grand scheme of things (with all due respect to their recent music of course). And then there's Fountains Of Wayne. Now, aside from the novelty hit "Stacy's Mom" (I can hear some of you frantically hitting the Back button already - g'night, folks!), a good portion of you probably still aren't aware of Fountains Of Wayne. And why is that? Fans have been wondering that for a long, long time, since critics have been calling them the next breakout hit since their debut in the 1990s. And yet, they haven't even gotten the huge cult following of, say, They Might Be Giants.

Maybe it's charisma? It is, after all, just some dorky white guys writing cute songs, and that's probably not the kind of gimmick the mainstream culture are so eager to hang their hat on. At any rate, they have gotten a small following by sheer virtue of being such a fun-loving songwriting duo, and their critical success has been solid as well. Oddly enough, much of their overall success has been from making cameos in other works - they wrote music for That Thing You Do, as well as the Josie & The Pussycats movie. Also, they were the guys that did the theme song to Crank Yankers.

That success, however, has been hampered a bit due to their tendency to take long breaks between albums. It's been four years since we've heard much from the band, although they did do a brief acoustic tour and some other scattered shows in 2009/2010 - of course, it took another year after that to finally put out Sky Full Of Holes, and that's such a tease for people who enjoy well-written pop music (and this reviewer certainly does). At any rate, it's finally here, and longtime supporters of their patented brand of endearingly goofy, yet warm-hearted pop-rock will be content again.



Now, Sky Full Of Holes does have one major drawback, that being how long it takes to really get going. "The Summer Place" (not to be confused with "Theme From 'A Summer Place'" but boy, what I wouldn't give to hear Fountains of Wayne cover that song) kicks the album off, and it's okay, albeit a little uninspired. It takes a little time for the album to really get warmed up, and while the lead single, "Richie And Ruben" is likable (an unfortunate tale of two business partners who really can't get the "business" part right), it's when we get to "Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart" that we really get momentum, with an infectious "whoa-oh-whoa" chant and an attractive, Cars-influenced arrangement (The Cars have always been a go-to inspiration for Fountains of Wayne).

For those unfamiliar with the band's lyrical prowess, well, the band are unashamedly nerds, and it extends to the tales they stick together with oddly specific details ("Sometime after sunset he is on his hands and knees / He is searching for his keys at a small Vietnamese / place on East 11th Street"), and padded with liberal use of pop culture references. Somehow, the way they go about this doesn't seem so much like they'd rather goof around than get serious, but rather it's their own personal stamp on their contributions to pop music, and it suits their sugary hooks really well. More than that, though, it's interesting how the little tales they weave together never ultimately seem for the sake of jokes, but instead, the minutia and specifics seem to mask some far more serious, and sometimes downright melancholy, themes. That bubbles to the surface on the thoroughly depressing "Hate To See You Like This."



Their approach also lends itself to some oddly heartwarming moments. The aforementioned lyric is from "Action Hero," which paints the picture of an unerringly average guy who's firmly wedged in suburban life and whose health is deteriorating, and despite it all, he refuses to discard the badass world-saving mental image of himself. Plus, they're romantics at heart, and as evidenced by the album's most touching moment, "A Road Song," they can write a convincing love story - in this case, a phone call from a touring musician to a frustrated wife at home. Whether it's autobiographical is up in the air, but this one seems to hit particularly close to home.

As bands get older, though, it can be expected that they're going to slow down a little bit. The album is a bit slower in step than we're used to from Fountains Of Wayne, with a far less hurried approach with extra emphasis on acoustic guitar. It flows together well, and it still displays their trademark gift for naggingly catchy hooks. Yet the highs aren't as high somehow. This isn't a pop knockout on the level of Utopia Parkway (to this day one of the most underrated records of the 1990s), rather it's a workmanlike record, a band playing to their strengths as a band without ever feeling the need to overstep their boundaries. Not that they really need to, but it's glaringly obvious that the guys don't have the boldness in their stylistic approach that they used to. Notably, there's far less keyboard here than what's par for the course for these guys.

The 411: Fountains Of Wayne remain a solid pop band, nothing more, nothing less. They're still kids at heart, still wearing their influences on their sleeves, still having fun, and still turning out some unabashedly fun songs. Yet somehow Sky Full Of Holes doesn't really shine as brightly as previous records. Chalk it up to age, or whatever, but there's still enough fun songs here to make it easily recommended for longtime fans, even if it doesn't look like another top 40 hit is on the horizon just yet.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]