Let’s Set the World on Fire We'll Burn Brighter than the Sun

It is a pretty bold statement when you name your band fun.. It may have been better if a emo band used that as a name semi-ironically but fun. is an indie pop band through and through. Making things worse is the pretentious stylization of the name: lower case “f” and a period (I thought punctuations in band names went out of fashion around the middle of last decade). But guess what, fun. is actually kind of fun. They started out solidly enough with songs like All the Pretty Girls from their first album which sounded like a more assessable version of Scissor Sisters.

Now fun. is primed from the big time with the release of their sophomore outing Some Nights. And bigger does not only describe their bandwagon but their sound as they repeatedly go for Queen style theatrics. Even when they go into Queen territory they manage to stay away from the pit falls of previous Freddy Mercury wannabes by never going over the top most notable in the title track (as well as Some Nights – Intro). Some Nights itself has a great tribal drum beat and chant along whoa’s and just the right amount of guitar, unfortunately they ruin the song a little bit with about ten seconds of unnecessary auto-tune before bring back some more awesome whoa’s.

fun. hits it peak when the band aims for an anthem with We Are Young and hits it out of the park with an instant sing-a-long that you will be able to join by the second chorus. Seriously, just try not singing along at some point. Just when you think things cannot get better Janelle Monae shows up to sing one line. And you know a sign of a good song is when it sounds just as good stripped down and yes the acoustic bonus version of the song is just as good. And the good times flows into songs like One Foot and Carry On.

There are a couple missteps on Some Nights. When It Gets Better first came on with its electro beat, I actually thought my computer was doing something wrong and was playing something it was not supposed to, the song just completely sticks out like a sore thumb. And if the ten seconds of auto-tune during Some Nights is unnecessary, then the auto-tune during most of Stars is downright painful to sit through much like the second half of Kanye West’s Runaway, but much longer. When will artist realize there has not been a good use of auto-tune since Peter Frampton put that weird tube thing in his mouth?

Song to Download – We Are Young

Some Nights gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.