Fountains of Wayne songwriter Chris Collingwood towers over the beige blather of his confederates by penning songs that are exacting in their detail—instead of gloopy one-size-fits-all fare, the quartet's surprise 2003 hit "Stacy's Mom" offered a sexually deprived MILF hellbent on parading around in a towel. If the amorphous rock of Coldplay et al. merely tosses around blank-faced pronouns and forces us to project details from our own mundanity, Collingwood attempts universality by using the opposite approach: extreme specificity. When you get to know the titular hero of "Yolanda Hayes"—a DMV clerk who looks good under fluorescent lights—or Seth Shapiro, the malcontent food-industry lawyer (who happens, by the way, to like Coldplay) at the center of "Someone to Love," they seem an awfully... More >>>