Fountains of Wayne

Traffic and Weather (Virgin)

In anticipation of hurricane season, Fountains of Wayne proffers an uncommonly strong batch of shiny red pop songs as a salve for hot afternoon commutes with no air conditioning. Although their strivings toward pop-cultural zeitgeist seem quaint in an age of fragmentation, you have to admire Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger for their everyman voices and cheeky middlebrow wit. As its drive-time-inspired title suggests, Traffic and Weather concentrates on life and love in the ever-moving workaday world. “Someone to Love” offers a bouncy message of hope for deadheading white-collar careerists, while “Yolanda Hayes” uses horn-laden Britpop to reveal the colorful soul within a DMV bureaucrat. The Jersey quartet lets its classic rock fantasies run wild on “’92 Subaru” before channeling Tom T. Hall on “I-95,” an evocative road ballad peppered with fading radio signals and truck-stop kitsch. Front to back, this 14-song slice of bop-worthy Americana hits the spot like hamburgers and coffee.

***.5

This article appears in April 13 • 2007.

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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.