Despite their best efforts,
Fountains of Wayne didn’t quite manage to capitalize on the crossover success of “Stacey’s Mom” with 2007’s
Traffic and Weather, so hearing the power poppers relax into a working band’s groove on 2011’s
Sky Full of Holes is not entirely unexpected.
Traffic and Weather had some snap on its surface, thanks largely to the bandmembers running with their encyclopedic pop eclecticism, letting themselves sonically accentuate their witticisms with passing production allusions, but
Sky Full of Holes is an adult alternative pop record through and through, unfussy and unfettered by unnecessary accouterments. It’s not necessarily drab -- “Radio Bar” speeds along with the assistance of blaring horns mimicking the vocal line -- but it is straightforward, the songs never reaching beyond the expected, the color never seeping outside of the lines. Straightforward doesn’t mean tired, either.
Chris Collingwood and
Adam Schlesinger’s specialty as songwriters has always been turning a trope inside out, finding ways to freshen or invert convention, and while they haven’t lost that knack, the directness of
Sky Full of Holes turns their tunes into something approaching standard-issue. Of course, savvy semi-satirists that they are,
Fountains of Wayne are fully aware when they’re skirting cliché, particularly when they’ve resorted to writing “A Road Song,” and they have the skill to keep proceedings tuneful and funny, but this dexterity doesn’t always keep
Sky Full of Holes from becoming just a tad too comfortable.