Tags
Adam Schleshinger, Chris Collingwood, Fountains of Wayne, FOW, Gay Potatoes, Gentle Hen, Henning Ohlenbusch, Look Park, Phillip B. Price, The Maggies, Winterpills
Damn I miss Fountains of Wayne. A friend sent me their 1996 debut knowing I was snowed under with a new career path and from there they joined a small coterie of my very favourite bands. They didn’t put out a lot of records but I cherish each one. The group’s main songwriters also produced some great solo stuff, Adam Schleshinger with Ivy and host of other projects and Chris Collingwood with Look Park. Schleshinger sadly passed away in 2020 but lately I’ve been wondering if there isn’t something I’ve missed from Collingwood. It’s been eight years or so since his Look Park project debuted. Surely he’s worked up a tune or two since then? A search on the ole interweb didn’t turn up much, though I did come across mention of his short-lived Gay Potatoes indie supergroup and a live performance from 2000. From what I can tell, group members included Collingwood, Gentle Hen’s Henning Ohlenbusch and Phillip B. Price of The Maggies and Winterpills. So if I can’t have a new Collingwood or Look Park record at least I can get a few degrees closer by exploring these projects and collaborators.
Let’s start with the Gay Potatoes show. It’s a fun, ramshackle affair, apparently the band’s first live appearance. The song line-up reflects that fact there are three songwriters and singers in the group. Show opener “Another Right Time” definitely captures the band’s power poppy energy. Price’s “Ballad of Frank Strange” and Collingwood’s future FOW tune “Hung Up On You” are also highlights.
From there exploring Price and Ohlenbusch’s work is a research project all on its own. Price has 12 solo albums, as well as 8 with The Maggies and 7 with his Winterpills project. Ohlenbusch has an equally daunting musical resume. This is going to a very random sampling of their accomplishments. Though you don’t have wade very far into The Maggies second and third albums to see the kinship with Collingwood. Tracks like “Be My Guest” and “Long Dark See You” from 2000’s Cryptic Valentine have a very Bangles meets FOW vibe while “Covering Me Up” and “Everybody’s Golden Age” from 2001’s Breakfast at Belreck’s are akin to Collingwood’s more pop country stylings. Price’s solo work and Winterpills catalogue lean more into his textured folk sound and away from power pop, though the 2002 solo track “Please Don’t Change” is certainly FOW-adjacent.
Meanwhile Ohlenbusch has put out some great eclectic and electric Simon and Garfunkel worthy tracks as Gentle Hen. His solo work steers in both folky and poppy directions at times too. You can get a taste of this on “V66” from his now unavailable Henning’s School for the Dead album or “A Machine to Break Your Heart” from 2006’s Looks Like I’m Tall or “Amélie” from 2011’s Henning Goes to the Movies. But check out his Gentle Hen track “She’s Got It Bad” from 2018’s Be Nice to Everyone, you’d swear it was a FOW deep cut you’d overlooked.
Do fabulously creative people just give up being creative? In my dreams Collingwood is still crafting his trademark tune-age, just waiting to spring them on us as a delightful surprise. But if we can’t have more FOW or Collingwood solo material we can’t go wrong digging deep into work from melodic compatriots like Price and Ohlenbusch.
If you need a nearly mid-summer pick me up, a song featuring a deliciously addictive hook that will have you hitting replay again and again, have I got the song for you! Kyoto, Japan’s The Mayflowers have nailed multiple generations of the Liverpool sound with equal parts La’s and Beatles on this should-be hit single, “Maybelline.” The opening riff clearly echoes The La’s “There She Goes” (which itself echoed earlier 1960s styles) while the song’s broader melody arc reminds one of The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright,” without sounding derivative The guitars here are exquisite, sibilant and shimmering, while the vocals layer up perfectly. The song originally appeared on the band’s 2012 album Plymouth Rock, recorded at Abbey Road studios, but is also included on the recent 2019 The Best of Mayflowers: From the Beginning, a good introduction to the breadth of their seven album catalogue.Maybelline
In the 1990s Fountains of Wayne had a huge impact on me. A Beatles, Elvis Costello, Marshall Crenshaw, and Squeeze kind of impact. I loved the quirky, alienated melodic should-be hits of the debut, couldn’t stop bopping to the hooks on Utopia Parkway, and marveled at the Sgt. Pepper-esque stature of Welcome Interstate Managers. Sure, Traffic and Weather seemed a bit of a holding pattern but then Sky Full of Holes had them back in fine form. I just assumed there’d be many more great albums to come. The recent passing of one half of the band’s creative force, Adam Schlesinger, has put the coda on that amazing body of work. Well, we’ll always have the songs. Indeed, now we’ll have to make do with how others take up the catalogue.
And here I am delighted to report that a fantastic new chapter of FOW life begins now with a great new collection of covers from Radiant Radish Records. If you love the band, there’s no doubt in my mind you’re gonna want to check out Can’t Shake That Tune: A Tribute to Fountains of Wayne. RR’s Mike Patton has put together a splendid stable of indie artist covering FOW material, with selections from each of the band’s albums. And for a collection put together in about a month – from conception to recording to release – the quality is impressive. Some artists hue pretty close to the originals (American Wood “Denise”; The Easy Button “The Summer Place”) while others attempt to jar our sense of the familiar with new tempos and styles (Jonathan Pushkar “Stacy’s Mom”). There’s punked-up energy (Vista Blue “The Senator’s Daughter”), folkie stripped-down restraint (Christian Migilorese “Troubled Times”), and plenty of ukulele too (The Soft Spots “Sink to the Bottom”).
When rock critics got wind of a new supergroup forming in early 2009 that would combine talent from the Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne, Cheap Trick and Hanson they were giddy with anticipation. But when Tinted Windows’ self-titled debut dropped in April, the gloves suddenly came off. Pitchfork called the record “hopelessly dated and irrelevant,” declaring “the whole of Tinted Windows is so much less than the sum of its considerable parts…” The review ended thus: “If there are dollar bins in the future, that’s where you’ll find this failed debut.” Ouch. Others were just as scathing. PopMatters complained that “Tinted Windows, tragically, is everything that a pop-rock disc shouldn’t be: bland, boring, and completely forgettable.” The reviewer thought the record was a “terrible, hookless affair,” perhaps “the worst album to be released in 2009 thus far.” There were more balanced reviews but they too were often hemmed in with backhanded compliments. The A.V. Club described the album as “wonderfully shallow,” Spin thought it “safe and bouncy enough for Jo Bros fans and Stacy’s mom alike,” while Rolling Stone preferred FOW more clever lyrics but allowed that “these likable tunes usually hit their modest marks.” Not exactly ringing endorsements.
I heard about these reviews at the time but only landed a copy of the record a few months ago. Imagine my surprise to discover that Tinted Windows is an amazing debut album. Forget all the rock critic super-group nonsense. Tinted Windows are a straight-up, guitar-driven poprock group, delivering a new century take on that stripped down late 70s/early 1980s melodic rock and roll sound, with all the usual nods to the Cars, the Knack, Big Star and the Cheap Trick. Adam Schlesinger writes most the songs and you can definitely hear the Fountains of Wayne influence on tracks like “Dead Serious” with its super hooky chorus or “Can’t Get a Read on You.” But as he noted in interviews, he deliberately toned down the signature FOW wordplay for a more direct lyrical style. You can really hear this on the debut single, “Kind of Girl,” with its solid thumping poprock groove. Other members of the group contribute a few songs: James Iha gets a nice slow Cheap Trick grind going with “Back with You” while lead singer Taylor Hanson’s “Nothing to Me” has some nice Beatlesque guitar changes. But the album’s hit single should have been “Without Love,” which opens with a killer hook that just won’t let up – hands down, best song on record. The Hanson/Schlesinger composition “Take Me Back” is another strong contender for a single with some very catchy hooks in the chorus.Without LoveTake Me Back
Some people are feeling pretty low. Now seems like a good time to visit the parallel but contemporary universe of Suzanne Vega. I discovered her debut album in the discard pile of the first (and only) commercial radio station I ever worked at in Smithers, British Columbia. It helped me survive that town. There was something poetic and ominous, alienated and soothing about that record. I spent a lot of late nights living within its sonic confines. A poet’s job is to help us cope with a world gone wrong. I think the Vega song for this moment is “When Heroes Go Down” from 1992’s 99.9F. Right now, the hero is not really any person but that sense of hope that people like to have around. It’s a catchy number, despite its message.
Poprock Record 