Perhaps it’s attributable to the noticeably low room temperature – the Ambassador, bizarrely, is tonight colder than even Dave Letterman’s notoriously igloo-like NY studio – but whatever the reason, New Jersey pop-rock masters Fountains Of Wayne are disappointingly sluggish getting out of the traps on the occasion of their debut Dublin gig.
Favouring lesser-known material from their first couple of albums for the opening part of the set, the group are slow to warm up in more ways than one (frontman Chris Collingwood, his hair newly-dyed peroxide blonde, performs the first few tracks comfortably wrapped up in jacket and sweater). However, FOW do begin to find their bearings with the mid-gig acoustic interlude. ‘Hacksensack’, in particular, is a stunning example of Collingwood and co-writer Adam Schlesinger’s Lennon & McCartney-like gift for a plaintive (though supremely catchy) melody and an acutely observed lyrical vignette (in this case, the Raymond Carver-like tale of a disaffected middle-class kids pining for a long-since departed high-school love).
Having found their groove, the band go on to deliver cracking renditions of ‘Stacey’s Mom’ and ‘Mexican Wine’ from their most recent opus, the typically superb Welcome Interstate Managers, both of which are brilliantly executed slices of furious guitar-pop that show up the likes of Sum 41 and Busted for the lame Green Day tribute acts they really are. Throw in the 24-carat indie-night classics of ‘Sink To The Bottom’ and ‘Radiation Vibe’ (one of the great lost guitar anthems of the nineties), and a triumph definitely looks on the cards.
Tragically, time-constraints mean that the band are forced to perform an abbreviated encore, which means we aren’t treated to old favourites like ‘Sick Day’ (which is quite possibly the best Paul Simon song ever, and it’s not even written by the great man!), nor do we get to hear Schlesinger’s gloriously kitsch sixties pastiche, ‘That Thing You Do’ (penned specially for the Tom Hanks movie of the same name). Most unforgivably, however, FOW neglect to give an airing to ‘Halley’s Waitress’, the highlight of Interstate, and a song which, with its masterful appropriation of ’70s power-ballad dynamics – not to mention its uncanny lyrical evocation of creeping suburban loneliness – is quite possibly the highpoint of Collingwood & Schlesinger’s output to date.
Fountains Of Wayne are among the premier purveyors of contemporary indie-rock – and their redoubtable songwriting duo are certainly several hundred miles ahead of the majority of their peers on the lyrical front – but there’s no escaping the feeling that, on another night, this gig could have been an out-and-out classic, rather than merely a reasonably diverting ninety-minutes’ entertainment. Shame.