Tonight, before a vociferous but motionless crowd, Fountains of Wayne kicked off their first tour since the 1996 release of their self-titled debut.| The band, known for their uplifting melodies and clever, name-checking lyrics were debuting their new material at least partially before a home crowd: singer/guitarist Chris Collingwood and guitarist/vocalist Jody Porter moved to this sleepy-but-swinging college town from New York last year.

Starting with the impossibly catchy "I've Got a Flair," the Fountains set the tone for the evening -- hooks, hooks, and more hooks. Lanky frontman Collingwood, battling a cold that would cancel their show two nights later, sang the wistful, witty "Please Don't Rock Me Tonight" before admitting to the audience that "It's strange to play in front of people you know." His comment was greeted with wild, audience-wide requests to "take off your pants!" and the club's atmosphere promptly loosened.

FOW competently plowed through their first new number of the evening, "Red Dragon Tattoo," which spins the tale of a guy who takes "the N train down to Coney Island" (because there's nary a Fountains set that doesn't include at least one song referencing New York's outer boroughs) and gets a tattoo to impress a girl. The song's protagonist proudly decries, "... now I look a little more like that guy from Korn."

Over the course of the dense set, the band, flanked by touring keyboardist Chad Murdoch, played about half of their just-released album, Utopia Parkway, and the bulk of their 1996 debut. And while the latter was instantly agreeable and precocious post-grunge pop, Utopia Parkway is a more complex outing, with Collingwood and Schlesinger showing a greater range of emotion as songwriters.

Shaking off two-plus years of rock cobwebs, FOW needed eight or nine songs to click in with one another and the audience, and noticeably begin to enjoy themselves. Before breaking into the edgy current single, "Denise" (which received just as triumphant a swell of recognition from the crowd as did their biggest hit to date, "Radiation Vibe"), Chris and company started and aborted a faithful rendition of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." And, not unlike the Replacements might have done, the boys riffed for a moment on an as-yet-untitled-and-unfinished idea before shaggily tossing off another one of their pop staples.

After a mock thanks-and-goodnight walk-off, an irritating local disc-jockey took the stage and hollered for louder encore hoots from the crowd, and the Fountains came back. "That was a forced encore," Collingwood joked into one mic. "It's in our contracts," volleyed industry-conscious Schlesinger. And with that they broke into four more songs. Well, three and a half, as their take on Billy Joel's "It's Just a Fantasy" was brief and partial. Undaunted, these over-educated balladeers played their now-notorious Britney Spears cover, "Baby One More Time" and the bouncing, McCartney-esque "Utopia Parkway."

"Leave the Biker," FOW's playful plea to a Harley-Davidson chick, was the final number of the evening and, in mid-song, local rocker Kurt Fedora (ex-Dinosaur Jr., Gobblehoof) executed a picture-perfect but badly received stage dive, putting a totally inappropriate exclamation point on an otherwise docile night of pop bliss.

ARI VAIS(April 13, 1999)