The Fontaine Toups

It can be tough to step out from an established band, even in indie-dom, but you'd never know it from The Fontaine Toup's first album. More "rock" and even "accessible" than one might initially expect, TFT has lost the Sonic Youth-isms and angularity of her old band, Versus, while retaining
its expert sense of pacing and drama. And the fact that "Who Told You" isn't a mega-huge radio hit in any format that allows guitars may just be THE musical crime of early 2004. - jeremy

from http://www.75orless.com/ - 75 or less

The Fontaine Toups -TFT (Teenbeat Records)

If a big label picks these guys up which would make good business sense, at least for the label this band will be all over the radio and MTV. The debut album from the Versus bassist and her firecracker jangle-rock trio combines the garage-rock fun of the Gore Gore Girls, the energy of Sleater-Kinney and the indelible hitworthiness of Blondie or the early Pretenders. There are at least six or seven count em bonafide radio hits on this cd.

For a musician, it's generally suicide to make your band an extension of your personality. You generally come across as an egomaniac or worse. In this case, it works maybe because it was inevitable. From her work with Versus, Fontaine Toups has as much indie cred as anyone. She could probably act like a total bitch and get away with it. But she doesn't: the honesty of her lyrics and the clarity and unselfconsciousness of her
vocals reflect who she is, nothing more, nothing less.
This isn't somebody who's going to show up for a show two hours late, completely wasted, and then tomahawk you with a mic stand. She just wants to play great songs and share them with you.

The hits keep coming, one after the other: the cd
opens with a blast of ringing guitar overtones and a hook that could drag the most incorrigible couch
potato out onto the dance floor. The second song on
the album, Who Told You pulses with garage energy,
reminiscent of the Iggy classic The Passenger. The rueful, heartfelt Spector laments the demise of a
relationship by recounting the hit songs that defined
it: "Goodbye, Good Vibrations So long, Helter
Skelter." The bouncy, effervescent Nico (ever think
you'd read that?!?) is a sassy vocal sparring match
between Toups and guitarist Andy Cheng. Perhaps the album's strongest track, at least musically, You Should Call is a bittersweet gem, drenched in sadness
and longing. Toups sings of "walking behind Bedford"
in order not to run into the guy she wishes would call
her but hasn't.

The next cut, the tongue-in-cheek TFT is a
hysterically funny spoof on the Williamsburg band
scene. Breathlessly recounting the excitement of taking the L and walking 14 blocks to a bar that was pretty much my home away from home for a couple of years. "Could it be that we've gone too far?" the band ask themselves in wide-eyed wonder.
"Do we need a credit card? Well, I guess we do!"
Look for this one on the jukebox at Max Fish. The
other cuts would fit well on late 80s or early 90s
albums by the Cure, Lush or even the Smiths (check
Andy Cheng's smooth, carefully enunciated vocals
especially). In a year that just keeps getting better
and better, at least as far as underground NY music is
concerned, this is one of the crème de la crème.
- Trifectagram

Nestled between the sunny California indie pop of Rilo Kiley's Take Offs and
Landings and the power poppiness of Velocity Girl sits the Fontaine Toups.
The group's self-titled album features eleven songs from the singer-guitarist and indie icon Fontaine of Versus. The lead track, "When I
Wake," sets the scene with a synth-heavy pop tune with rumbly basslines and
incredibly infectious melodies. "TFT," bursts at the seams with energy,
featuring slightly distorted vocals (à la the Thermals, but clearly more time was taken to record this track) and includes an infectious
sing-along chorus making it one of the album's strongest three-minute, hook-laden pop gems. Fans of Versus and mid '90s indie rock will not be disappointed by this stellar debut. (Teenbeat.net)
—Caroline Borolla - Rockpile

I do like songs with "do-do-do-do"s in the them, I guess. Here's an appealingly straightforward rocker from the oddly-named band the Fontaine Toups--oddly named because the leader herself is, apparently, named Fontaine Toups. She used to be in a popular
NYC-based band called Versus, which recorded five CDs through the '90s. "When I Wake Up" has a loose-limbed energy to it that plays well off Toups' Chrissie Hynde-like swagger. The song comes from the band's debut CD, released earlier this month on Teenbeat Records;
the MP3 is located on http://thefontainetoups.com.
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