Fountains Of Wayne

The self-titled debut appeared on Atlantic in 1996, with Radiation Vibe and Sink to the Bottom establishing the band's combination of strong hooks and conversational detail. The arrangements were concise, often putting a clean vocal melody against a rougher guitar surface. Sick Day showed how much emotional and social information the writers could fit into an apparently modest pop song.

Utopia Parkway followed in 1999, taking its name from a road in Queens. Guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young helped give the songs a fuller band sound. Red Dragon Tattoo and Denise sit within a record populated by suburban ambition, private fantasy and the gap between the two. The geographical details provide a setting rather than simply decorating a familiar rock lyric.

Welcome Interstate Managers in 2003 brought Stacy's Mom, whose video and chorus made it the band's most widely recognised song. The record surrounding it had a much wider emotional range. Hackensack gives distance and unfulfilled expectation a gentle, persistent ache, while Mexican Wine offers another example of bright melodic construction carrying a less straightforward situation.

The band continued with Traffic and Weather and Sky Full of Holes. Across the catalogue, the craft is unusually easy to underestimate because the songs move so naturally. A change of chord, a vocal harmony or one carefully chosen object can shift a scene from comic to painful. Their best writing gives an apparently unremarkable person enough detail to become difficult to forget.