East Coast bias

Growing up I always felt I had a pull to Chicago, even though I didn't get to spend much time out here. Now that I do live out here, though, I find that in many ways I'm really an East Coast kid at heart. Case in point: the little internal spasms of joy I get listening to all the little references slipped into songs by Fountains of Wayne, the power-pop quartet behind "Stacy's Mom." Anyone who grew up in the New York area in the late 80s/early 90s needs to listen to "Traffic and Weather," the fourth track on FOW's new album of the same name, for a reference to the NBC-4 newscasters that had me cracking up.

Traffic and Weather may not have the hit that Welcome Interstate Managers had in "Stacy's Mom," but it is almost unquestionably a tighter, more consistent album. Where Managers lags for much of its second half, Weather never falters, even if its highest notes aren't quite as high as its predecessor's.

The album opens with what is probably its best overall song, the first single "Someone to Love," which features Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood's typical detailed verses with a rollicking chorus. Like the songs for which they're best known, it's a great slice of power pop, but then so is most of the album - although Schlesinger and Collingwood also love playing with a number of different genres. "Fire in the Canyon" is a better country song than what most country artists are putting out today, for example.

Also on display is the FOW sense of humor - without being as overtly comedic as, say, Weird Al Yankovic, FOW have managed to put together a number of jokes, both straight and wry. For example, "Someone to Love" unfolds by describing the loveless lives of a male and female, and then puts them in the same place for the third verse - but in Beatles-like fashion (think "Drive My Car"), the song twists at the end. "'92 Subaru" and "Strapped for Cash" are both great style parodies - "Subaru," an ode to pointlessly souping up a boring car, sounds like the Doobie Brothers, while "Cash" sounds like a Steely Dan song not told in metaphors. Add in the amusing story of hitting on the woman at the DMV ("Yolanda Hayes") and you've got a pretty funny album.

But as usual, this isn't the whole story. Schlesinger and Collingwood craft pop songs without holes; the words flow all over but they always seem to run together perfectly - consider the line "They tell each other jokes that they both know that they both know" in "New Routine." How many bands could get away with that one? The lyrical craftmanship is on display everywhere from rhyme to meter to wordplay in titles ("Revolving Dora"). The voices change from song to song - a bored business traveler, a jealous boyfriend, a compulsive gambler, various omniscient narrators - but the quality remains pretty constant. There are a couple of lesser songs - "Planet of Weed" is fairly disposable, in particular - but overall the quality is high throughout.

Basically it's another fun album from a band that makes little but. If you liked "Stacy's Mom," there's no reason not to be all over this one.