If I had to name Fountains of Wayne’s best album, I’d be torn between Utopia Parkway and 2003’s Welcome Interstate Managers. Utopia Parkway is a more focused and consistent album, but many of the songs on Welcome Interstate Managers are the band’s best yet.
Managers is one of those cases, more prevalent these days it seems, of an album where less is more. It is a really good album at 16 songs. At 12 it would be amazing. The first six songs fly by in a burst of creativity and craftsmanship but things start to fall apart a few songs after that. Everything here is good but they needed an editor. Of course, in the MP3 era we can all be editors, and it’s easy enough to re-sequence the album as an iTunes playlist.
But I’ll concentrate on what’s great about Welcome Interstate Managers. While Utopia Parkway was about suburban adolescence, Managers is about the mundane details of daily life, for kids and adults alike.
The band’s biggest hit, ‘Stacy’s Mom,’ was propelled up the charts thanks to its hot video starring Rachel Hunter as a classic MILF. In fact, I think the word MILF really started taking off around the time of that video. It’s told from the perspective of a kid who’s more attracted to his girlfriend’s mom than to his girlfriend.
‘Bright Future in Sales’ is the sad-but-irresistibly-catchy tale of an alcoholic businessman:
Gonna catch a flight to Baltimore
Try to kill an hour with a whiskey sour
If there’s time I might have just one more
‘Hey Julie,’ which I’ve featured on the blog already, is a sweet love song about a cubicle drone who makes it through each day because he knows the woman he loves will be there when he gets home. ‘Hackensack’ (another previous Song of the Day) is the opposite… a tune about a small-town guy pining for the girl who escaped to Hollywood.
One of my very favorite tracks on the album is today’s choice, ‘Valley Winter Song.’ It’s a beautiful Simon & Garfunkel-esque ditty about making it through the chilly times, both literally and figuratively. It’s sad but hopeful and the kind of thing I could listen to on a loop.
Don’t take it so bad
You know the summer’s coming soon
Though the interstate is choking under salt and dirty sand
And it seems the sun is hiding from the moon
Your daddy told you
When you were a girl
The kind of things that come to those who wait
So give it a rest girl
Take a deep breath girl
And meet me at the Bay State tonight
And the snow is coming down
On our New England town
And it’s been falling all day long
What else is new
What could I do
I wrote a valley winter song
To play for you
And late December
Can drag a man down
You feel it deep in your gut
Short days and afternoons spent puttering around
In a dark house with the windows painted shut
Remember New York
Staring outside
As reckless winter made its way
From Staten Island to the Upper West Side
Whiting out our streets along the way
And the snow is coming down
On our New England town
And it’s been falling all day long
What else is new
What can I do
But sing this valley winter song
I wrote for you
Meet Me In Montauk 
Sweet sentiment, and another song that effectively plays on the symbolism of weather. Wonder if the songwriter had listened to “Here Comes the Sun” before picking up his own guitar to write this little ditty. 🙂
As I sit here “choking under salt and dirty sand” caused by construction and television installation, I’m waiting for the summer to arrive!! What else can I do?
This is the FOW album with which I am the most familiar. I love the songs you reference and have featured elsewhere such as “Hey Julie,” “Hackensack,” and “Stacy’s Mom.” This song is wonderful as well..as will be our new TV viewing once the dust settles:)