Album Review: fun.- Some Nights

(click on the album art to purchase the album)

Nate Ruess is not your conventional pop singer. One listen to Some Nights’ intro will make that fact abundantly clear. A mix between the brash bravado of Freddie Mercury and biting, even self-deprecating lyrics reminiscent of Say Anything’s Max Bemis, Ruess keeps listeners thoroughly entertained. The singer/songwriter of Fun. is maddeningly diverse; his voice sounds beautiful even through the altering effects of auto-tune, as evidenced by the bridge of the title track “Some Nights” and album closer “Stars”. The latter even features the use of a vocoder effect on Ruess’ voice (which surprisingly sounds like James Brown singing through an accordion. How’s that for a comparison?).

Fun.’s second album (the band’s Fueled by Ramen Records debut) Some Nights features something that pop music is in general lacking, honesty. Ruess said the album was titled “Some Nights” because of the fluctuations one’s personality can undergo from one night to another. “Some nights I say fuck it all, stare at the calendar, waiting for catastrophe,” he writes in the intro. Although it’s not a concept album, the diversity of the songs on the album seems to display this idea accurately.

The album transitions oddly from the upbeat, even punky, “It Gets Better,” with its pre-programmed drums and repetitious chorus, to the soft ballad “Why Am I the One”. The latter begins with a tender, lonesome guitar line from Jack Antonoff. Like the well-known chorus of “We Are Young”, “Why Am I the One” goes into a half-tempo chorus which kicks the catchy sing-along nature of the song to an extreme.

In fact, the transition between “It Gets Better” and “Why Am I the One” is probably the greatest example of one of the album’s only drawbacks. The songs are arranged in the album to highlight the Some Nights theme, but often the songs won’t flow into each other effectively, jarring the listener. The transition between “All Alright” and “All Alone” highlights this flaw as well. Producer Jeff Bhasker (who worked with Kanye West on the fantastic My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) is more than capable of providing smoother transitions than what is present here, so I’m sure this was an artistic decision by the band.

The album's other drawback is the lack of live drum tracks. Although he band does well with pre-programmed drums and simple drums beats, some of the songs could have benefited from live drums in the studio. “Carry On” comes to mind as one major example, the albums long outro could have benefitted from loud crashes on the cymbals and tom fills instead electronic drum and bass beats. The aforementioned Bhasker clearly brought a hip-hop influence in this aspect of the recording, and his hand is clearly evident in the clean production as well. Antonoff and jack-of-all-trades Andrew Dost do an excellent job making the songs sound multi-layered and full, but why couldn’t the band have called touring drummer Will Noon (of Straylight Run fame) and asked him to record a few parts for the album?

Those small undesirable aspects don’t negate from the wonderful and rich product that fun. has provided with this album. The band still released one of the most thoughtful albums thus far this year, an amazing accomplishment for an album that debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200. One of the recurring lyrical themes on the album is the thought of looking up at the stars; but this theme can be seen as a comment on their burgeoning popularity. In the title track, Ruess sings “When I see stars, that’s all they are,” indicating that at the beginning of the album he doesn’t seem himself as one of them. However, Ruess sings in the final track, “Stars,” “You're always holding onto stars,/ I think they're better from afar/ Cause no one is going to save us,” displaying that fun. isn’t going to wait for a savior in the music industry to make them popular. Instead, they’re going to make a name for themselves and continue to making stellar (see what I did there?) music and gain popularity organically.

This strategy seems to be working, as the New York trio is going to undergo a supernova of popularity this year.

Bottom Line: Some Nights is the best pop album you will listen to this year. Everyone should hold me to that statement, because I think it will still be true on December 31st (if we are still alive then, that is).

For those who rock: The Format’s Dog Problems, Fueled By Ramen records, Freddie Mercury, Glee, T-Pain Auto-tune iPhone App


Written by Craig Ismaili.