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.

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