Seeing shows in Los Angeles can sometimes be a bummer, for two reasons:
1) In big cities (especially entertainment-focused places like LA), there’s always some performance happening, so no one feels unique.
2) Trendy people never feel obligated to applaud anyway.
Even before their debut album, “Aim and Ignite,” officially released in August, fun. had begun to catch a lot of blog buzz, which doesn’t always bode well, because it could mean that a lot of fashionable and cool twenty-somethings will show up and be too dedicated to posing and wearing sunglasses indoors to figure out if it’s possible to clap with drinks in their hands. It does, however, also make it that much more rewarding when all the pieces seem to come together and both the band and the audience are actually feeding off of one another’s energy.
Somehow, fun. hit the jackpot.
The success might have something to do with a pretty fortuitous combination of good timing and real stage skills. They had a Friday night show and a sold out crowd who had all had a couple months to learn the lyrics and were ready to chant them right back at the band as they played. It helped—it really helped—that everyone in this band played well. While fun. have only three official band members, they’re touring with six people to help recreate the songs live. Each song had the fullness it needs to really affect listeners, the instruments played with enough precision that each song sounded like the record but with a certain live, open flare. Nate Ruess also had impressive vocal control, not shying away from any notes that were higher or more difficult and therefore not cheating listeners out of all the musical money-shots.
(fun. playing “Be Calm” live at The Troubadour, November 13, 2009)
The band jumped right into performance without hesitation, uncaring about whether or not the crowd was prepared. With an album that’s largely successful because of how much excitement the band has managed to inject into a handful of songs, playing an equally exciting show seemed like it would could either be easy or fall so flat that it was impossible to recover.
Because each of its core members comes from other bands (Nate Ruess used to be the frontman for The Format; Jake Antonof and Andrew Dost are from Steel Train and Anathallo respectively) “Aim and Ignite” is made up of music veterans. Starting their set with “At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)” caught the audience off guard, but then the energy didn’t die. They made the transition to a live show seem effortless, keeping energy at the highest levels, supporting each song with familiar and charming banter, and avoiding pretension despite being a talked-about band who decided to include random punctuation in their name. This band earns its moniker just as much live as with the album, and if they can get big city, Friday night cool kids to dance and sing, then they’ve got to be on to something special.
November 19th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I was there and can attest to all of this! Amazing, unabashed, energetic FUN on the part of the crowd and the band. It all came together and created sheer joy. One of my top 10 shows of the year, easily! Come back soon, fun.!
November 19th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Could not agree more. I was at the San Francisco show a few days earlier and it was a wonderful, sweaty, dancey, sing-a-long for the entire time they were on stage.
December 7th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
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