Island guys

Wheatus's teenage wasteland

by Sean Richardson

Long Island is one of the biggest and most notorious stretches of suburbia in the country, so no surprise that it's never been much of a pop-music mecca. Sure, it's got hip-hop spilling over from the boroughs and as much hardcore punk as any other suburban sprawl, but after that it's mall culture and, more often than not, Billy Joel that dominate the airwaves. On last year's Utopia Parkway (Atlantic), guitar-pop smart-asses Fountains of Wayne -- who named themselves after a department store in New Jersey -- delivered a howlingly accurate, entirely loving satire of soulless suburban NYC, using all sorts of local color from Jersey, the Island, and southwest Connecticut (Westchester isn't mentioned by name, but it's there in spirit). The disc gave voice to people who were completely uninterested in having one -- and, as you could predict, became a cult item rather than a blockbuster despite its unending supply of winning choruses.

Although one song was called "Prom Theme" and another name-checked Korn, the Fountains record was mostly for and about grown-ups. By contrast, Wheatus -- whose "Teenage Dirtbag" has become the inescapable rock novelty hit of late summer -- make music for and by the kids of Long Island's malls. They even recorded their debut disc, Wheatus (Columbia), in the basement of singer/guitarist/songwriter Brendan Brown's parents' house, in his home town of Commack, New York. I've never been there, but a quick flip through the atlas tells me Commack is smack dab in the middle of the Island -- right down the road from Deer Park, home of the equally tuneful (though not nearly as much fun) modern-rock hitmakers Nine Days. Who knows whether any of these post-college-age guys has ever heard of Fountains of Wayne? Regardless, they're following through on the promise of Utopia Parkway, turning the cultural wasteland they grew up in into a sugar-sweet pop heaven.

"Teenage Dirtbag" is a perfect geek-rock anthem, the kind alternative radio used to crank out every month or so in the post-Weezer days of Tripping Daisy and Nada Surf. Playing a high-schooler every bit as convincingly as the guys in Blink-182 do, Brown lusts after a girl named Noel who rocks in Keds and tube socks and has a boyfriend who drives an IROC. Noel doesn't give a damn about our beloved dirtbag until she mysteriously shows up on his doorstep on prom night with a precious pair of Iron Maiden tickets in hand. That's when Brown switches from dirtbag to prom queen, putting on a hilarious girlie voice to play Noel as the band quiet down to a hush. It's hard to imagine this scenario going down now, when metal is cool again and Maiden are back on the charts -- or during Maiden's prime, when no metalhead would ever have admitted to crying in his room over some girl. But think back to the aforementioned Tripping/Nada era ("I Got a Girl" and "Popular," respectively, in case you've forgotten), when geeky alterna-rock boys were just starting to admit their shameful love for metal, and it makes perfect, touching sense.

Compared to what you hear from most of the bullies on modern-rock radio today, Brown's singing voice is decidedly, well, faggy. So it's only fitting that the song that follows "Dirtbag" on Wheatus is a straight-faced acoustic cover of Erasure's "A Little Respect," the British synth-pop duo/gay icons' greatest hit. Wheatus do for Erasure what Erasure once did for ABBA, recontextualizing an amazing song for an audience that probably never had the chance to hear the original. And for those of us who were already hip to Erasure, Brown takes a priceless line from the second chorus -- "What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover?" -- and rescues it from the oblivion of Erasure singer Andy Bell's unintelligible delivery.

The rest of Wheatus continues along in the same vein as "Dirtbag," combining the literate, catchy guitar pop of Fountains of Wayne with the adolescent obscenity of Blink-182. Brown turns out not to be such a wuss after all, picking fights with the town bad-ass on "Truffles" and a record-label jerk on "Hey, Mr. Brown." The disc isn't exactly a shoestring production, but it does have a certain home-produced charm, casually weaving timpani, harmonica, and banjo into the fuzz-guitar din. "Better go back to Commack," Brown warns on the faux hip-hop closer, "Wannabe Gangstar," as he cruises around in his Mustang blowing up mailboxes and toilet-papering front yards. Wheatus could be his ticket off the Island for good -- if only he didn't love the place so much.

Wheatus perform with Eve 6 at the University of Rhode IslandŐs Keaney Gym on September 22. Call 874-2014.