Sky Full of Holes

Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger, songwriting team behind the venerable power pop group Fountains of Wayne, have made enough contributions to pop music to transcend their sole hit single, 2003's "Stacy's Mom." Schlesinger has been enlisted as a songsmith for a variety of projects (the Oscar-nominated theme from That Thing You Do!, power-pop supergroup Tinted Windows, etc.) and the band's increasingly infrequent albums have reliably been irreverent slices of power-pop glory. Sky Full of Holes, the NY-based group's fifth offering, is their first record for dad-rock specialists Yep Roc (home to alt-rock elder statesmen Paul Weller, Billy Bragg, Nick Lowe and Bob Mould) and spends little time pandering to any sort of radio or pop-leaning crowd. Not to say these songs aren't catchy, just that this time around, the hooks are more Old 97s than Cheap Trick. Sky isn't a full-on alt-country record: "The Summer Place" and "Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart" both nod to their typical sound, and per usual, there's plenty of storytelling from Collingwood and Schlesinger, who are seldom afraid to get a little goofy ("Radio Bar") or lay on the sentimentality ("Action Hero"). Fountains of Wayne aren't reinventing alternative music, but hey, they sound like they're having more fun than many of those who are.