Fountains of Wayne: Utopia Parkway : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In one of those moments of adolescent impulsiveness that dominates Fountains of Wayne's Utopia Parkway, a love-struck lad tries to impress a girlfriend by getting a "Red Dragon Tattoo": "Now I look a little more like that guy from Korn," he declares, but the truth is that he still sounds like the singer in a bubblegum band. In "Hat and Feet," a jilted boyfriend feels so inconsequential that he practically disappears into his own wishy-washiness. Yet on their second album, Wayne's-world auteurs Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger aren't campaigning for soft-rock sainthood. Instead, the duo has a blast celebrating and satirizing the rituals of youth, whether sending up the high school "Prom Theme" ("We'll forget each other's names. . . . Then we'll work until we die"), joining the caravan to the big rock extravaganza ("Laser Show") or trolling the concrete jungle ("Valley of the Malls"). They create a fourteen-song tribute to four glorious decades of pop -- from the Beach Boys to the Cars to Freedy Johnston -- with fuzzed-up guitar riffs, spooky little synthesizer melodies, pep-rally hand claps and testosterone-free harmonies. Call it revenge of the dweebs. (RS 810)

GREG KOT