Look Park - Look Park

Advertised as the solo project of the guitarist of Fountains of Wayne's Chris Collingwood,  Look Park, is nothing like Fountains of Wayne.  It's lighter, poppier, and whoa, the lyrics. 

Fountains of Wayne existed in a special place on my playlists some years ago for all the reasons it appears Mr. Collingwood has passed on for Look Park. FOW have songs built around snarky, funny lyrical explorations of suburbia wrapped into neat little hard rocking packages that were highly enjoyable to listen to.  The lyrics were mini-short stories of Seinfeld-like angst and humor about urban misadventures and office fun and damn were they enjoyable. 

I struggled through Look Park.  The sappy, washed-out pop songs one right after another without any interesting bits of lyrics I so enjoyed with his real band was just too much for me to follow through with.  Also, the claim that this album may be a psychedelic pop album is not an accurate one.  You'll have to bring your own psychedelics to this pop.  There are too many bands playing this West Coast lazy love song formula(Would certain musicians please stop listening to Pet Sounds please?) and Look Park stands head and shoulders below most of it. 

Fountains of Wayne and their campy funny lyrics overcame the sort of predictable rock foundation of the song structures on such tunes as ‘Stacy’s Mom’ (Their biggest hit), but Look Park, while almost hitting it with the somewhat above-average tunes, ‘Minor is the Only Key’ and ‘You Can Come Round If You Want To,’ just don’t have enough here to recommend.