Chicago Tribune
Friday, December 20, 1996
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The year has produced a small wave of pop bands who write about terminal dweebishness. Any 16-year-old wrestling with the rituals of dating and the confusion, inadequacy and boredom of being caught between adolenscence and adulthoof suddenly has a raft of bands to call his or her own. Call it the wake-of-Weezer invasion: Nada Surf, the Eels, the Lilys, and, best of all, Fountains of Wayne.
Here are a couple of guys--Adam Schlesinger and Chris Colingwood--who do not rage at the world and don't pout like spoiled rock stars, but who on their self-titled debut album write about the office worker having a bad day ("Sick Day"), the 90-pound weakling who watches his girl get snatched up by a punk with seafood in his beard ("Leave the Biker"), the reluctant partygoer ("Please Don't Rock Me Tonight"). It's done with catchy melodies, furtive humor, boyish voices, fuzzed-up guitars and a toy organ bought for $3 at a garage sale, the star instrument on the drone-pop wonder "Sink to the Bottom."
"The batteries died halfway through the take and started to make this horrible weezing sound," says Schlesinger. "But it seemed to suit the song."
That sense of almost comical, underdog charm pervades the dozen songs, what's supposed to be "cool" isn't, and everyday events and people are ennobled--like the worker drone in "Sick Day."
"It started out as a joke, I just started stringing together stream-of-consciousness images about commuting to work, and Chris wrote the second verse about this office temp who thinks up ways to make the day go faster," Schlesinger says. "We've both had totally thankless jobs like that, and Chris would hear people saying things like that. I mean, what a horrible way to live, trying to make the day end sooner. It added a poignance to the song that it didn't have at the beginning."
When they first began collaborathing about 10 years ago, the duo were big fans of British bands such as Aztec Camera, Everything But the Girl and Prefab Aprout. "We loved that wimpy pop sound, and I think consciously we toughened up a bit as we were writing songs for this album, but the basic style is still there--writing on acoustic guitar, keeping the song simple and concentrating on the melody and lyrics," Schelsinger says. "I think the simpler and more natural a record sounds, it lasts longer."
By banging out "Fountains of Wayne" in a more aggressive style, the duo removed any hint of preciousness from their music. Now even their sad-sack songs have an air of exuberance about them that has been lacking in rock the last few years.
For Schlesinger, it's only one of several roles he's been playing in recent months. In addition to playing bass in another rock band, Ivy, signed to Atlantic, he wrote the keynote song for the mythical pop band the Wonders in the Tom Hanks' movie "That Thing You Do!" The New York resident also is one of six co-owners of Chicago-based Scratchie Records, and Fountains of Wayne will perform Saturday at Metro with fellow Scratchie acts Fulflej and Chainsaw Kittens. Two of the label's other owners, D'Arcy and James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins, will emcee.
"I think a lot of people who have been in the business as musicians have fantasized about being able to do something to help out a band they like," Schlesinger says. "We're just a group of sixx people who pooled our resources and formed this strange indie label that is kind of a combination of very diverse tastes."
Scratchie stuff. While Fountains of Wayne is distributed through Atlantic because of Schelsinger's Ivy connection, Mercury Records has first dibs on getting involved with the promotion and marketing of the rest of the Scratchie roster.
Schlesinger says the label initially began without any major-label affiliations but made the Mercury connection because "there's so much overhead involved with staffing and buying ads and things like that that are necessary to help get a band noticed. We were taking on some projects that we felt deserved a bigger audience than we could immediatly provide, which is where Mercury comes in."
Although it's too early to tell how successful the relationship will be, Schlesinger says, "We're starting to see the benefits with the Fulflej record ('Wack-Ass Tuba Riff'), which is being picked up by some major radio stations and MTV is starting to play their video."
"Wack-Ass Tuba Riff," co-produced by D'Arcy and Iha, has a thick, layered guitar sound and arena-worthy dynamics characteristic of the Pumpkins, but is distinguished by the loopy vocal sensibility of singer No Joke G and a groove-based rhythm section that hints at the group's affinity for hip-hop.
Chainsaw Kittens' self-titled album is simply one of the sleeper pop records of '96, arguably the career high point for a band that has its roots in the mid-'80s Oklahoma psychedelic-punk scene that also spawned the Flaming Lips. Embellished with live strings, the group's arrangements give full reign to singer Tyson Mease's cracked visions.