All Kinds of Time (Thanks Adam)
Hearing about the tragic death of Adam Schlesinger today hurt. Both from how unexpected it was and for how profound an impact his songwriting had on me in highschool.
It’s always been sad to me that Fountains of Wayne were so well known for “Stacy’s Mom” as (I felt) it misrepresented how much this band brought to the table.
My friend Kevan introduced me to the record Welcome Interstate Managers when I was a sophmore, I think. As a guy that wasn’t a huge fan of “Stacy’s Mom” I wasn’t all that stoked to give the album a listen. Kevan had good taste though, and assured me that the rest of the songs on that album were very different.
He wasn’t wrong.
If you’ve yet to listen to anything aside from the hit single about falling for your girlfriend’s hot mom, you owe it to yourself to grab some headphones and sit with these tunes for a while.
Opening with quirky and catchy power chords that abruptly change into sing-songy pop organs for one of the best choruses to come from the early 2000s, Mexican Wine is the perfect opener and begs you to hang out for a while. Half way through they introduce horns and full production synths that just feel huge. Especially as a high schooler who had expected to hate what I had foolishly assumed were a bunch of shallow frat musicians, this song slapped me in the face.
Hackensack is the fourth track on the record and slows things down, revealing the more emotive side of Adam’s lyricism. His strength isn’t limited to deft control over his vocal chords. His lines are clever and resonate because of their earnest tonality and strange phrasings that I can’t imagine working for any other band. The closest artist I could compare his writing to would be Motion City Soundtrack who also has some strange turns of phrase and cool quirky lyrics. If you’re a fan of them, you’ll adore this album.
One of the earliest songs I learned on guitar was Hey Julie. It’s an adorable love song full of the comforts in long time love. True to Fountains of Wayne style, the song is a short, clever melody full of just enough rhythmic foot tapping goodness to encourage you to start it over as soon as it ends at a too soon 2:36. The background instruments compliment this sparse track so well it just feels so happy and full. One of my favorites to this day.
I don’t want to exhaustively go through each song, but this album trends more to the slower side of things and is so much better for it. If you listen to only one song today in celebration of Adam’s life, I hope sincerely that it’s “All Kinds of Time”. It’s been my soundtrack this evening as I prepare to listen to the record again after my daughter goes to sleep. It’s melancholic guitar and stripped back production interplays with Adam’s perfect falsetto verses. If you don’t feel what he’s singing in this track you lack the human components that connect us all. This song is fantastic and feels classic in the way many songs from the 70s feel timeless and descriptive of not just their era, but somehow every era.
The world lost an absolutely incredible musician today. I deeply believe we are survived by the things that we create and the art that we leave for this world so I hope that you take an hour this evening or tomorrow and sit with Adam and the band on Welcome Interstate Managers. It was a gift to this world that went largely overlooked for being too successful with it’s least serious tune. To steal a phrase from Chuck Palahniuk: Thank you Adam, “may one of your many, many graves always be inside my head.”
The Album on Spotify.