33 rebellions per minute
"the Buick's in the drive, it's good to be alive"
1999
Fountains of Wayne, UTOPIA PARKWAY
A stunningly good album of, well, pop music. By which I mean? Um. Melodies at the forefront -- more complicated than Green Day, less absurdly intricate than XTC. Harmonies, delicate as PET SOUNDS or brash as "California Girls" as need be. Not a single veering from 4/4 time or verse/chorus/verse. This is "pop" as in "pop-tart" or "snap crackle", not necessarily as in "popular"; the most accurate descrition of this album I can give is "like Engine Alley's nonexistent second album being covered in full by a tribute band devoted to convincingly 1981-ish Shoes and Sinceros covers", and if there's anyone in the world besides me who could follow that (there's probably a few), they probably already own UTOPIA PARKWAY. A more useful description would reference Ben Folds songs and performance by what the 1965 (beginning-to-mature) Beatles would've sounded like with early-80's technology.
Beats are crisp, guitars glitter like synthesizers, synthesizers make noises streamlined enough to be guitars, and even the hard-rock solo on "Go, Hippie!" sounds like John Squire's I-am-a-blues-God demonstrations that decorate the Stone Roses' various whimsically trippy pop diversions. "Troubled Times" uses eight guitar chords to sound as simple, sweeping and sincere as McCartney's equally deceptive "Yesterday". "Laser Show", which admittedy sounds a little out of place here, reminds me quite a bit of that massive oldie that rhymes "lose control" with "give me that old time rock'n'roll", which I don't think was done by Huey Lewis and the News, so I can say that "Laser Show" would be like Huey's version. "Amity Gardens" is subtler, allowing a hypnotic monotone to creep into its verses, and the "tick tick ticking of the clock" to fight against the rhythm, but by chorus's end you wouldn't want to be too sure this wasn't a Kinks' VILLAGE GREEN remake. "Denise"'s verse vocals suggest a impostor coach disguising his voice while using the megaphone, and "Red Dragon Tattoo" uses whooshing noises to compensate for the meter's imbalance when a tense "with the money I saved/ gonna get me engraved" is forced to fill the same amount of time as the jaunty "Monday, gonna take a ride on/ the N train down to Coney Island". But again, both songs are classic rock by chorus time. "Hat And Feet" is "Stand By Me" by way of Herman's Hermits. "Prom Theme", soft and reserved and with strings, could be one.
All of which is, mind you, pretty great. Fountains of Wayne remind me of my favorite practitioners of this form, not the merely good ones; the vocal lines are confident in writing and confident in performance. Music like this can be vapid and stil be delightful. But UTOPIA is _not_ vapid. A loose, personal concept album about suburbia, interrupted by love songs (cf. almost any album by the Kinks), it has the smarts to be ironic, and the heart to keep irony from grating. "They come from Bridgeport, Westport, Darien/ down to the Hayden Planetarium", in the same song as rhyming "watch the stars" with "Kirk and Lars", is as playfully entranced by the ease of a silly rhyme (a la Robyn Hitchcock's "Brenda's iron sledge/ please don't call me Reg/ it's not my name") as it is by the cheap shot at geeks who probably don't disresemble the Waynes themselves. Which also applies to the would-be rock stars of the title track who "with papers and a staple gun/ gonna put my name in front of everyone". "...Tattoo"'s narrator, in blissful crush over a skinhead wonder, clearly thinks "will you stop pretending I've never been born/ now I look a little more that guy from KorN?" is a fair hope, and the narrator of "Denise" doesn't think _he's_ ridiculous in ticking off inside info about "I heard she used to be married/ she listens to Puff Daddy/ she works at Liberty Travel". This is one of the places poignancy comes from, a place quite near where the prom attendees hearing (but not listening to) "...Theme" would be as that narrator sweetly intones "We'll pass out on the beach/ our keys just out of reach/ and soon we'll say goodbye/ then we'll work until we die". I've Got A Secret, it's called, and the onlooker has the choice, I guess, between sympathy and nyaa-nyaa.
The nyaa-nyaa approach, and cleverness for the sake of cleverness, are both things I approve, certainly, when needed. But "A Fine Day For A Parade" is clearly about a sad old woman dealing with pain and loss, not just about "clears up her head with bourbon/ cuz beer is so suburban/ and declasse for what it's worth". "Amity Gardens" and "Troubled Times" are about trying to correct egregious mistakes (the former mean, the latter just forgetful). "Go, Hippie!" watches a would-be suburban rebel with, not the urge to join in, but a sadness for rent in the surety that the forces designing the landscape are stronger than any individual girl. "The Senator's Daughter" even ponders the notion that mass media figures might be human. Every song here has a good joke or three, and every good joke has a fool. Foolishness is a very bad and problematic thing, probably a greater source of misery than outright evil, but also as human as a trait can get. To shame the idiocy and praise the idiot is a trickier little artistic feat than you'd ever guess just from humming along. Which is still, don't get me wrong, the best and most obvious way to respond here.
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