Track Listing

1. Mexican Wine
2. Bright Future In Sales
3. Stacy's Mom
4. Hackensack
5. No Better Place
6. Valley Winter Song
7. All Kinds Of Time
8. Little Red Light
9. Hey Julie
10. Halley's Waitress
11. Hung Up On You
12. Fire Island
13. Peace And Love
14. Bought For A Song
15. Supercollider
16. Yours And Mine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41080 in Music
• Released on: 2003-09-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

CD Description
Following a four-year hiatus that found Fountains of Wayne going from Atlantic Records to S-Curve Records, New Jersey'sfavourite power-pop outfit delivers WELCOME INTERSTATE MANAGERS, the band's third opus. FOW does an excellent job of capturing the suburban zeitgeist that dates back to the band'sname (derived from a Garden State backyard fixtures emporium) and carrying on from 1999's excellent UTOPIA PARKWAY.
Wielding boatloads of hooks and harmonies, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood delight with songs about high school sweethearts (the melancholy "Hackensack"), a good woman's love in the face of a crap job (a sweet, semi-acoustic "Hey Julie"), and exploding cell phones (an anthemic "Mexican Wine"). With its handclaps, rad harmonies and perky synths, the irresistible "Stacy's Mom" fantasises about a best friend's mom, and seems tailor-made for any future American Pie sequels. Other pop manna includes the Beatlesque "Fire Island", thecountry-fried "Hung Up On You" (featuring guest lap steel player Robert Randolph), and the Brit-pop psychedelia of "No Better Place". WELCOME INTERSTATE MANAGERS easily notches a place on any Best of 2003 list.

Customer Reviews

5 stars despite the flaws
I am a massive FoW fan. I have loved this band since the opening bars of Radiation Vibe. I thought they had split up, and had resigned myself to only ever owning 2 FoW records. Then I read on the internet that this was out, and an hour later I owned it. They could have recorded an album full of Celine Dion covers and I would still have been ecstatic. It is slightly weird, therefore, that I haven’t fallen entirely in love with this record.

Why, I can’t really say. All the essential FoW elements are there, from the headrush chorus of Stacey’s Mom, with it’s crystalline harmonies and keyboard riff which makes a bid to be the catchiest FoW song ever (yep, even including Red Dragon Tattoo) to the melancholy sweetness of Winter Valley Song, which sounds like a throwback to the first album.

So, the problems. Well, the album is overlong. Compare it to the first record, where every song had a place and a purpose, and there are at least 4 fillers. Hung up on You, Peace and Love, Little Red Light and Yours and Mine should all have been reserved for B-sides. Secondly, at times the songwriting seems like FoW-by-numbers. Fire Island should be the equal of Prom Theme, but falls short, just lacking the X-factor. Too many songs fall into the ‘mid-tempo trap’ of the weaker material on Utopia Parkway, like Fine Day for a Parade.

Enough bad stuff – it doesn’t come naturally to criticise my favourite band ever. The first 3 tracks are classic FoW, bubbling guitars and spot-on harmonies. Bright Future in Sales and Stacey’s Mom should both reach number 1, if there is any justice in the world. There isn’t, so they won’t even break into a top 40 dominated by R&B. All Kinds of Time and Halley’s Waitress stand up to anything they have released previously, both beautiful, delicate songs, that other artists would kill to have written.

If any other band had released this record, it would be an amazing achievement. But FoW have become victims of their own success. Being the best songwriters in their field means that if they write anything less than perfection it is seen as a fall in standards.

So, in conclusion. If you are a fan, BUY IT, there is still more than enough great music on it to warrant buying it 10 times over. Just don’t expect it to unseat Fountains of Wayne as the best album of all-time. You will still love it, as it still has plenty of those little moments of genius that FoW fans know all about. If you are not a fan (yet), BUY IT, just buy the first 2 albums as well, and listen to them in the order they were recorded.

Fountains of Wonder
To me, this is the best album of the year. In fact, it's probably my favourite album since "Utopia Parkway" came out in 1999. The Fountains of Wayne have hit on a truely winning formula that has left their back catalogue unimpeachable. Any criticism of them is negated by the irony and cynicsm that drips from their lyrics (and we're not talking "trucker hat/PBR" kind of irony here...).
Too funny? Self-deprecating. Too chirpy? Bittersweet. Too derivative? Drop in the ending of "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles ("Leave the Biker", from FOW) or even rip-off yourself, tongue firmly in cheek (3/4 way into Little Red Light, from W.I.M.)
The Fountains of Wayne live in a concept world designed to make us empathize more with the real world, and their latest album expands their vision more fully than the last two. Yet the band's irony makes these viginettes all the more poignant, and that surely is the key to thier brilliance.
Will this album make them more famous? Probably, as Stacy's Mom works her way through MTV2 into the hearts and minds of the nation's kids.
Do they deserve to be more famous? Hell Yeah! They can squeeze more ideas into a 2 1/2 minute pop song than many bands fit into a career.
The big question is, though - Do I want them to be more famous? Or would i prefer to think this world existed only for my entertainment, and that i was the only person in the world that owned the only album ever, to namecheck both the Tappan-Zee bridge and Nyack...

Sigh, ok world, you can share....

Every one a winner
It's very rare for me to find an album that I want to listen to all the way through without feeling the need to skip a track or two. Radiohead's 'The Bends' is one such album, and 'Welcome Interstate Managers' by the excellent Fountains of Wayne is another.

Like many, I guess, I came across FoW through 'Stacey's Mom' which is a brilliantly catchy tune. I then heard them on Simon Mayo's Album Chart Show on R2 which whet my appetite for more.

This album has so many cool facets. It's funny, incisive and well observed, musically interesting and varied, and very well played.

'Hey Julie' is my personal favourite, but every other track is a gem in its own right.

In summary, if you like well written, well performed guitar based music, you can't go far wrong with this album.