Fountains of Wayne
Fountains of Wayne is one of the leaders of the latest in a long series of power- pop revivals. If the music sounds a lot like mid-'60s pop rock, it's no accident, for the  songwriters are unabashed British Invasion fans. The songs on the debut album,Fountains of Wayne, take perky, '60s-like hooks and marry them to  ambiguous, unnerving, '90s-like lyrics. Some songs offer an untrustworthy narrator;  when the singer complains about "Joe Rey," a Eurotrash jet-setter, you wonder whether  he's expressing disdain or envy and whether the song's noisy guitar energy belongs to the  band or to Joe Rey. And there's something about the pent-up Mersey-beat energy and  pleading vocals of "Please Don't Rock Me Tonight" that make one suspect the singer  doesn't really mean what he says. Schlesinger and Collingswood are undeniably clever,  but they're not afraid to rock.--Geoffrey Himes