Alt-Pop
Fountains of Wayne
Traffic and Weather
***1/2
After breaking through with the ubiquitous “Stacy’s Mom,” from their 2003 album Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne have thankfully not returned with a collection of songs about Stacy’s sister or Stacy’s second cousin. Instead, the band’s fourth album, Traffic and Weather, continues their longstanding tradition of impeccably crafted pop songs that are also keen character studies, with each of their albums playing like a finely tuned collection of short stories.
It’s hard to put a finger on why exactly Traffic isn’t the masterpiece that Managers was, and it may simply be that after four albums, leaders and co-songwriters Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger are just a little too good at what they do. They don’t really stretch out here, but it’s hard to criticize such catchy tunes as the Tom Petty-ish “’92 Subaru” and the synth-heavy “New Routine,” which match sharp lyrics with indelible hooks nearly as well as anything Collingwood and Schlesinger have written in the past.
Those lyrics don’t immediately jump out at you the way they have on earlier FoW albums, though; you might actually have to read the liner notes to notice all the clever turns of phrase, and nothing here sticks inescapably in your mind like “Stacy’s Mom” did (and still might after you hear this album, even though it’s not even one of the tracks). Collingwood and Schlesinger remain consummate professionals and expert pop chameleons, throwing hints of country, dance and new wave into their power-pop mix. And they’re as observant as ever about middle-class life on the Eastern seaboard, and the telling minutiae of places like the DMV, the airport and the highway rest stop. So even if the album doesn’t rise above the merely professional, that still puts it above 90 percent of the pop music other artists are churning out.