Fun. : Some Nights

Q: What do you get when you cross Nate Ruess' voice and T-Pain's overuse of auto-tune? 

A: A failed experiment, entitled Some Nights.

I've been looking forward to the release of Fun.'s (I've been arguing with myself about how you punctuate the possessive form of a name that ends in a period for a while and this is what I came up with) new album that debuted a couple weeks ago for a while now.  I've been a fan of Nate Ruess' first band The Format for a long time and was upset when they broke up in 2008.  Around that time, I must have just missed all the press about his new project that started up the next year, because I was at a Motion City Soundtrack concert where a little band named Fun. was opening.  They put on a great show and left me thinking "Wow, that sounds a little like The Format.  They're pretty damn good."  A quick Google search after the show told me that Nate Ruess teamed up with Andrew Dost of Anathello and Jack Antonoff of Steel Train, released an album, and started touring all within a year and a half of The Format breaking up.  Busy dude.

I downloaded Aim and Ignite, their first album, when I got home and loved it.  I saw them live again last year when they headlined a tour promoting the album and they put on another great show.  Their sound, vaguely reminiscent of an indie-pop Queen, translated very well live and they had a powerful, fun (pun intended) stage presence.

After a lot of build-up on the Twitter-verse before Some Nights was released, I couldn't help but get a little excited.  The release of their first single "We Are Young" on Youtube built my anticipation up even more, especially when I found out that they teamed up with soul-infused vocalist Janelle Monae.  The song was a little bit more mainstream sounding, but still had the Fun. flavor that I had come to love.  The song got huge very quickly, largely due to the fact that a lot of mainstream radio stations had picked it up, a Glee performance of the song (this admittedly irked me a little), and a well-produced spot in a Super Bowl ad for the Chevy Sonic.

Good for them.  I'm not one of those pretentious hipster indie-listeners that accuses a band of "selling out" when they start making money (isn't that the point, anyways?).  I think selling out is just when a band changes their sound just to fit the mold.  I don't think that Fun. really sold out.  They always had a poppy sound that was fit for radio.  I do think, though, that they failed with this one.

There are a couple of gems on this album: "We Are Young" is a good song (so hipsters can just shut up when they start complaining about hearing Nate Ruess' voice on the radio), "Some Nights" works well (though I don't give it a complete pass, but I'll get to that in a second), and "Stars" has a great balance of high and low moments.

Now that I've given the album the couple props that it does in fact deserve,  I've got to get the biggest gripe I have about this album that causes the entire album to just fall apart: Nate Ruess's voice shouldn't be auto-tuned.  In fact, I don't really think anyone that isn't a mainstream rapper should be auto-tuned (and that's even a stretch).  There isn't a single time on the album where the auto-tune adds to the songs that it's in.  Even in the songs I said I liked, the auto-tune detracts from the parts that it's in.  I find myself skipping entire songs at a time as I'm listening to the album again, just because there's too much auto-tune.  

Obviously, it wasn't added because Nate Ruess needed it--he's got a great voice.  I don't think it was added to make it more mainstream, because mainstream music doesn't use it the way that Fun. is trying to.  My theory is that they thought it would make a new, unique indie-pop sound.  It certainly is unique, but it also sucks.

Sorry Fun.  I know that you're probably very proud of this album, but it just doesn't work.  I still like you as a band.  Nate, you'll always have a special place in my heart.  I'm still going to see you for the third time when you come to Minneapolis in April, but that doesn't mean I like your newest album.

Here's an acoustic version of "We Are Young" that gives you a good idea of what Nate's unaltered voice is capable of: