fun.

Aim and Ignite

(Nettwerk)

Record Review by Amber Henson

fun. must be really worried about getting in trouble for false advertising ‘cause damn if they didn’t work their collective asses off to make this album one hell of a good time.  Every song on this record is filled with startlingly memorable melodies, pleasurable crescendos, and harmonies reminiscent of Queen and The Beach Boys.

There seems to be a recent resurgence of musicals, so if you are one of those Glee-loving, Mary Poppins-attending, The Sound of Music-sing-along goers, you should either own Aim and Ignite or feel very much ashamed.  Although the album is full of drama, the band presents all of these ideas in a very over-the-top, uplifting way.  There are hymns, ballads, string quartets, and brass sections to make up these ten tracks.

The middle of the album contains a track called “I’m Not as Sad (As I Used to Be)” that is about the average length of most songs of theirs, four minutes, but it is incredibly epic.  This led me to wonder what they had in store for their final track if they could afford to put one so grand in the middle of the album.

Surprise, surprise, five tracks later I found that their lingering effort was close to eight minutes long, with a soaring melody and a gush of issues from the lead singer Nate Ruess (formally of The Format).  The potential listener of this wall of sound will find it difficult not to get sucked into the wall of sound that has been created by Ruess and his cohorts, Andrew Dost of Anathallo and Jack Antonoff of Steel Train.

These three artists have made a very deliberate creation, designed to create thinkers out of anyone who will give them an ear.  I spent some of that thinking time wondering how on earth Ruess fit into the jeans he’s wearing in their music video for “All the Pretty Girls.”  Seriously?  I couldn’t even wear them on my arms.