Bottom Line: Tom's terrific
Fountains of Wayne (Atlantic)
Album of the week
Two years ago, Adam Schlesinger scored an Oscar nomination for "That Thing You Do!" the catchy title tune of the 1996 film directed by Tom Hanks concerning a 1964-era pop group destined to be a one-hit wonder. Here's hoping that Fountains of Wayne, the New York City band that Schlesinger, now 31, formed in 1995 with his former Williams College classmate, cowriter and lead singer, Chris Collingwood, 31, is not so jinxed. Should a similar fate await the pair and their band-mates (Jody Porter on guitar, Brian Young on drums), it'll be no fault of this lively album's. From the sheer exuberance of the opening title track to its wistful closing tune, "The Senator's Daughter," the sophomore album from the group—named after a Wayne, N.J., garden statuary store—is a slice of pop-rock heaven. With 14 songs, mostly of the two-and three-minute variety, the CD is a fountain of melody, harmony and hooks. And the lyrics live up to promising titles like "The Valley of Malls" ("And God forgive the passengers if we should fail/To find a penny fountain or a half-off sale") and "Red Dragon Tattoo" ("I'm fit to be dyed/Am I fit to have you"). A tune called "Hat and Feet" uses a Road Runner cartoon image to describe a loser crushed by love, and "Laser Show," a ditty about stoners catching a planetarium's psychedelic display, sounds like a lost track from Paul McCartney's '70s pop-rock jewel Band on the Run. It's got Wings.
Bottom Line: Flashback to pop's past, and a blast
Betty (TMFB)
Boop? No. Rubble? Nope. Just plain Betty. But something has sure got into this onetime cabaret act. Known originally for their intricate vocal harmonies and bawdy good humor, this trio has morphed from a mostly a cappella group into a hard-rocking guitar band. Formed in Washington, D.C., in 1988 when sisters Amy (cello) and Elizabeth Ziff (guitar) teamed up with Alyson Palmer (bass), Betty is now augmented by five backing musicians who lend guitar and percussive punch. Highlights here include original rockers "It Girl" and "Dolls and Bennies," as well as a version of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" that begins as a carol and ends as a gothic rock anthem.
Bottom Line: Betty's best yet
David Allan Coe (Sony/Lucky Dog)
"It takes all kinds of people to make the world go 'round," David Allan Coe sings on his new CD's "Song for the Year 2000," which celebrates tolerance for gays, transsexuals, breast implants and a black man taking hormones to turn himself white. In the case of Coe, however, a career rapscallion (and 1967 graduate of the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus), this sudden embrace of the politically correct will surely seem a bit calculated to some. After all, this is the same performer who tried to insinuate himself into the 1970s "outlaw" movement of his musical betters by writing the self-serving, name-dropping tune "Willie, Waylon and Me."
Whatever the truth of his politics, this durable 59-year-old writer of past hits—"Take This Job and Shove It," "Jack Daniel's If You Please," "Would You Lay with Me (in a Field of Stone)"—won't easily shake the notion that he's just a good ol' boy poseur at heart. Here he fails to achieve the wizened, B.B. King quality he seems to strive for on the bluesy "The Price We'll Have to Pay" and "Let Me Be the One You Turn To." And while most of the songs have his familiar, country-boy slant, there's always the feeling that he's trying to be something he isn't.
Bottom Line: Tries too hard to please
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Ralph Novak.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
