S-Curve

Not the most vintage of Backspin, I know, but somehow I managed to sleep on Fountains of Wayne, so when colleagues turned me on to Interstate Managers, I flipped. This is a veritably perfect power-pop record: catchy as all get-out, full-sounding, funny — and there's nothing close to a dud among 16 songs. The disc also has something to say, albeit in a wry, ironic fashion: Thematically, the songs delve into early adult ennui and the vapidity that awaits the generation if they choose a career in the corporate world. "Bright Future in Sales" and the gooseflesh-raising rocker "Little Red Light" are sublime evocations of the theme. Power-pop fans, I presume you already know of FoW, but just in case you've been sleeping as well, dally no longer.

This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...