Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCI--Fountains of Wayne: A Dip in the Ocean

Outside of Bruce Springsteen and the Avett Brothers, I'd be hard pressed to name a musical artist whose work I have enjoyed more over the last fifteen years than Fountains of Wayne.  And while I admittedly do not keep up with new music anywhere near what I once did, their final album, Sky Full of Holes, would be my choice for album of this decade, bar none.  For me, they're the perfect mix of smart, pop, and humor (much of it tongue in cheek)--and this week's tune showcases all three.

Fountains of Wayne formed in the tiny little village of New York City in 1995, when college friends (and college band mates) Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood reunited after a few years apart.  They released their self-titled debut in 1996, met with a modicum of success and critical acclaim, followed that up with another well received LP, Utopia Parkway, before reaching the cusp of fame with their third album, Welcome Interstate Managers which featured their biggest hit single, "Stacy's Mom" (which was nominated for a Grammy).  The band would go on to release two more albums before calling it quits earlier this decade.  The band toured extensively throughout their seventeen years, and while they never quite achieved the success they should have, they did have a devoted following for their music, which some have described as Geek Rock.

Fun Fact:  The band tooks its name from a lawn ornament store in Wayne, New Jersey, called, appropriately enough, Fountains of Wayne.

Fun Fact #2:  Schlesinger has also been nominated for an Oscar--he wrote the title track for Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! which received an Academy Award nod for Best Original Song.

"A Dip in the Ocean" was the sixth song on their fifth and final album, the aforementioned Sky Full of Holes, released in 2011.  The song was never released as a single, but the album, surprisingly enough (as it didn't have a hit single like Welcome Interstate Managers), was the highest charting of their career, reaching #37 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard 200.

As I've noted a time or two here on FNJ, you can take the boy out of California but you can't take California out of the boy, and any song about spending a day driving up the coast and eventually hitting the beach for swim is probably going to be the berries for me.  Add in some killer power pop hooks, a driving rhythm section, and some pitch perfect backing vocals (especially the "Yeah by the water now" in the chorus) and you've got all the makings of a great song.  As I noted with the Secret Machines and FM radio last week, I've a hunch that had "A Dip in the Ocean" been released in the 70's it would have been all over top 40 AM radio.  As is, it's a song that has filled me as much joy as any song in recent memory, and every time I hear it I'm ready to hit the beach somewhere along the California coast and suck in all the sea air while I'm floating in the Pacific....

Liner Notes:  "It's you and me on a beach in 1998/Leaning into the breeze from the willows/And rhythm and grace are reborn in this place/I'm assured the procedure is painless..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee