Written by: Matt Kosinski
In my twenty years on earth, the past seven of which I’ve spent as a budding, and then fully-blossomed, music aficionado, I’ve never met a more adequately named band than fun. The ten songs of their debut album, Aim and Ignite, are ten straight-up, no bull pop. The disc is an unabashed romp through fields of Queen-esque bombast, radio-ready hooks, and heart-on-sleeve lyricism. If you like your pop music heavily veiled under layers of distortion, folk, prog-rock compositions, or whatever else the cool kids are using nowadays to mask their love of decidedly un-hip influences, then you’d better look elsewhere. fun. aren’t looking for cred; they just want to have some, well, fun.
And, boy, do they have it. Aim and Ignite is the logical sum of its parts: for anyone who doesn’t frequent Absolutepunk.net, some explanation might be in order here. fun. is a bit of an indie-rock supergroup, comprised of Nate Ruess(ex-The Format), Jack Antonoff (ex-Steel Train), and Anthony Dost (ex-Anathallo). So, if you add The Format’s propensity for highly emotive, sing-along song structures, Steel Train’s muscular guitars, a dash of Anathallo’s creativity, and the pop sensibilities of each, you get Aim and Ignite.
Opener “Be Calm” sounds like a song from a power-pop musical, with Ruess’s powerhouse vocals taking center stage (the usually do throughout the album, and this is a great thing. The man’s got incredible pipes). “Benson Hedges” opens with a beautiful vocal harmony in which Ruess and co challenge god head-on. “All The Pretty Girls” also starts with a harmonizing chorus of voices before launching into the catchiest track on the album, complete with hand claps, violin hooks, and a searing guitar solo, courtesy of Antonoff (his guitar work on the album is the second-most impressive thing about it, failing only to beat out Ruess’s vocals).
The rest of the album pretty much follows the same formula of catchy power-pop melodies and cathartic lyrics about breaking up with girls and bands (Ruess uses a lot of the songs to about the break-up of his old band, The Format) and then moving on to face whatever else life has to offer, both good and band. The band throws a couple tricks in along the way that take the songs to interesting levels: the boy-girl dueling vocals of “At Least I’m Not as Sad (As I Used to Be),” the gospel choir of “Barlights,” and the almost cloyingly sweet piano balladry of “The Gambler.”
Interestingly, Aim and Ignite’s strengths and weaknesses come from the same place: it’s unapologetic straightforwardness. While the songs are simple, catchy as all hell, and loads of fun to rock out to, in making them so basic, fun. fails to differentiate themselves from the pack. They take very few risks, all of which are rewarding, but none of which payoff quite enough. Fun. are on the way to making the power-pop formula their own, but they just haven’t gotten there yet. Given enough time, the band will undoubtedly work out all the bugs and produce some absolutely killer albums. For now, though, fans will have to be content with the bombastic blast that is fun.’s debut album. And that is in no way too much to ask.
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Since things have been rather dormant around here lately, I’ve decided to launch a new feature called Song of the Day. Much like Video of the Day, we won’t necessarily feature it every single day but you’ll find tracks often.
