Fountains Of Wayne: Chris Collingwood (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Adam Schlesinger (drums, guitar, keyboards, vocals). Additional personnel: Danny Weinkauf (bass); Dominique Durand (background vocals). Recorded at The Place, New York, New York between January and April 1996. Fountains Of Wayne provide the essential missing link between the Raspberries and Green Day: sunny, harmony-laced choruses and pure-pop song structures with a gritty, Buzzcocks-like edge provided by distorted guitars and strident drumming. Songs like "Joe Rey" and "Barbara H." strike the perfect balance between sweetness and bite. The band, from Wayne, New Jersey, is the brainchild of vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger. Schlesinger was the composer of the Beatlesque title song of the film "That Thing You Do," and the songs on the band's self-titled debut (all Schlesinger/Collingwood cowrites) update that tune's amiable power-pop quite agreeably. The frothy pop hijinks are backed up by a keen sense of humor, as on "Leave The Biker," which finds the protagonist exhorting the object of his desire to dump her bad-boy beau in favor of his nerdish cool. The gentle, poignant "She's Got A Problem" is an affecting, sympathetic ballad that recalls the granddaddy of nerd-pop, Jonathan Richman. The coup de grace comes with "Please Don't Rock Me Tonight," a clever twist on rock and roll cliches that sounds like a sequel to the Records' classic "Starry Eyes."

• Format: Vinyl
• Released: 11/16/2015