SOUNDTRACK: FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE-Tiny Desk Concert #164 (October 6, 2011).
I have never really gotten into Fountains of Wayne even though a) they write incredibly Cathy indie pop, the kind of music I rather like and b) their name comes from a store that I have driven by many times in my life. I think I didn’t like their first single when it came out or something, so I just dismissed them and never looked back.
Which is a shame because this set is full of delightful, slightly dark pop gems.
Fountains of Wayne put out a couple records in the 1990s and then went away and put out a couple more in the 2000s. There are two excellent songwriters in the band singer guitarist Chris Collingwood and bassist Adam Schlesinger. Schlesinger has been writing pop hits for (a lot of) movies and other lucrative gigs. Clearly he has a knack for pop goodness. And Fountains of Wayne is on the good side of pop.
“The Summer Place” opens with bouncy chords (the two guitarists play acoustic guitars). But despite the poppyness, the lyrics are a little dark: “She’s been afraid of the Cuisinart since 1977 / now when she opens up her house she won’t set foot in the kitchen.” I love the harmony vocals and how the second acoustic guitar sounds vaguely like a violin on the single notes. “Valley Winter Song” is an older song. It still has that sound–catchy guitars, nice harmonies and a notable bass line.
“A Dip in the Ocean” (like the first song, it comes from their then new album) features a prominent bass line and wonderful oohs and ahhs. The lyrics are clever and funny. Based on these two songs, I’d say that the 2011 album is pretty excellent.
When they ask if they can do one more, Stephen Thompson says that “that clock is one song fast,” and they launch into one of their older songs, the lovely ballad, “Troubled Times.” The video of the song gets cut off just before the end, but if you listen to the audio you can hear the last few chords.
My friend Steve yelled at me for not liking this band, and I can see that he was right.
[READ: April 21, 2016] “In the Tower”
I had been trying to get caught up on all of the Harper’s stories that I’ve read. These next two get me caught up to the present, with a couple really old ones left. And man, these two stories are pretty dark.
This is an excerpt from a short story (it must be a long short story). The narrator, now forty-two years old, explains that he has found a refuge from his family–his tormentors–in the tower of their house. The tower is a long-unused library which he was familiar enough with to know that the left side was philosophical books and the right side was belletristic books. He was told over and over to not go into the library. But it was his refuge.
He grabbed a book, it was by Montaigne. He didn’t know what he was grabbing as he didn’t light a lamp for fear of mosquitos.
Much of this excerpt is filled with a kind of perverse Oscar Wilde litany:
“In every one of my statements there was nothing but this mockery and scorn in which they will one day perish, but I think that one day I will perish in their mockery and scorn.”
“Our unhappiness isn’t something we are talked into, unlike our happiness, which we talk ourselves into daily”
After several paragraphs denouncing his parents as conflating everything he has ever said he says he has always been in good hands with Montaigne.
“My family was too late in seeing that they had bred their destroyer an annihilator….How often they said that they would have preferred a dog to me, because a dog would have guarded them and cost less than me.”
As the excerpt ends and he is hiding with his Montaigne, he hears his family looking for him saying they hope nothing has happened to him.
It’s hard to know what is really going on, as this narrator sounds totally paranoid, but I didn’t love the excerpt enough to want to find out more.
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SOUNDTRACK: ICE NINE KILLS-“Jason’s Mom” (2020).
I heard about this song from Metal Sucks who hilariously showed the three ways this song is perfectly timely:
