America Town

Description

Five for Fighting is actually just one guy with a rather substantial chip on his shoulder who's taken his name from the amount of time a hockey player spends in the penalty box for fighting. Los Angeles native and erstwhile prodigy John Ondrasik really knows his way around a melody, bolstering it with a dramatic sense of timing and rhythm like a more modern and hipper Elton John. And that defiant chip does makes for powerful poetry, although oftentimes he sacrifices logic and clarity for the sake of iambic pentameter. While "Superman" is a catchy affair about the restrictions of being superhuman and the desire to belong ("I'm only a man in a silly red sheet looking for special things inside me"), it's doubtful that anyone who ever read a DC comic would believe that Superman would ever be "digging for kryptonite on this one-way street," since a loose fragment from Superman's home planet might turn him into a blubbering infant or a giant ant. At best, Five for Fighting follows in the narrative-based path paved by Counting Crows. --Jaan Uhelszki