Live Review: Fountains of Wayne at Great American Music Hall, 04/30/07

Live Review: Fountains of Wayne at Great American Music Hall, 04/30/07

Fountains of Wayne just do that thing they do. Apparently, it isn't very much: Aidin Vaziri | "The last time we played this room was for some weird corporate party," Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger said at the band's sold-out show at the Great American Music Hall on Monday, surveying the audience -- most of whose members, incidentally, wouldn't have looked entirely out of place at a company function. "I think there were more sushi trays than people." The uneasy smile on his face suggested that he wasn't joking.

While the maguro and unagi platters may have cleared out, a sense of disenchantment clung to the air. Despite a near breakthrough with the 2003 hit "Stacy's Mom" (now best remembered as a Dr Pepper jingle), 12 years after forming the New Jersey power-pop quartet, Schlesinger and singer Chris Collingwood have once again made an album full of songs about lonely commutes and hopeless cubicle romances set to a roaring FM radio soundtrack.

That "Traffic and Weather," the group's most recent release, finds Collingwood singing about the tedium of other peoples' 9-to-5 lives -- from the crush-worthy DMV clerk in "Yolanda Hayes" to the television news anchors who fall for each other on the title track -- isn't as much of a surprise as watching him deliver the material with the detachment of someone who can't wait to punch out his own time card. Not many singers greet a second encore with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for being asked to work overtime. Click for more.