RIYL49

On a week that brings us an end-of-contract demo dump, Spanglish versions of your favorite oldies, one-half-posthumous blues duets and two discs worth of ambient improvisation from the man responsible for creating XTC, one new release stands out. Which is good, because that's all I have time for this week.

Fountains of Wayne Traffic and Weather Sometimes you can judge just how successful a band is by how much free stuff they put out on the web. The bigger the fan base, the less you have to give away. For their first album of new material in four years, the Fountains of Wayne are giving us thirty-second samples of their new songs. I'm not sure even those short clips are necessary for this disc to be a huge hit.

Does anyone not know what this disc will sound like? There's no doubt that it will be filled with the same self-depreciating get-stuck-in-your-head-forever pop that the boys from North Jersey have been giving us for years. The only question is if they continue to get better or if success has made them complacent. Their past history (and the first single, which has already been getting plenty of airplay around here) tells me the former is the more likely scenario.

This week's list:

1. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
2. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
3. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
4. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
5. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
6. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
7. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
8. SON VOLT Search
9. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
10. AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
11. RICKIE LEE JONES The Sermon on Exposition Blvd.
12. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder
13. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
14. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
15. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
16. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
17. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
18. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
19. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
20. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
21. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
22. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
23. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
24. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
25. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
26. VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
27. BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little
30. BILL RICCHINI Tonight I Burn Brightly

Dropping off the list this week:

• GRAHAM PARKER - Don't Tell Columbus

RIYL for the week beginning April 2, 2007. Backstory here.

Comments

[The Velvet Blog]

Sadly, I think you overestimate FoW's fan base. Despite "Stacey's Mom" being a huge hit, the album it came from, "Welcome Interstate Managers," barely cracked the Billboard top 100, if I'm remembering correctly.

I went out and bought "Traffic and Weather" at lunchtime yesterday. My initial impression is it's a fun, smart CD but doesn't quite reach the heights of "WIM" or "Utopia Parkway." I've only listened through twice, but right now I'd give it B+ (and the last two were solid As or A+s).

[TwoBusy]

I just picked it up at lunch today as a birthday gift for TheWife. It'd better be good...

(shaking fist angrily, as if implying dire potential consequences)