Sky Full of Holes

Unlike the iconic Ft. Wayne NJ garden store that inspired its name, Fountains of Wayne are still very much open for business. In fact, their new album Sky Full of Holes sounds like a whole new beginning for the band and its powerhouse songwriting duo Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger. Called, ''full-fledged art heroes'' by The Dean of Rock Critics Robert Christgau, FOW continue their reign as pop music masters, while Collingwood and Schlesinger also explore new frontiers within their unique respective songwriting aesthetics. Ranging from high-energy power pop to intimate, acoustic-driven ballads, Sky Full of Holes tracks ''The Summer Place'' and ''Richie And Ruben'' showcase the band's renowned storytelling abilities and flair for creating memorable characters; elsewhere, the album takes a more impressionistic approach, as in the shimmering ''Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart'' and the elegiac ''Cemetery Guns.'' Sky Full of Holes is Fountains' most successful distillation of their musical maxims to date, but it's also a whole hell of a lot of fun.