Fun. - "Aim and Ignite" 4.5/5 Stars
Like many of you out there, I only recently became aware of the band Fun. and thoroughly enjoyed their album Some Nights. I was delighted to learn that this was actually their second title and quickly bought a copy of their first one, Aim and Ignite. I trust my gentle readers will forgive me if this review is thus somewhat out of order.
True to the group’s name, this one is just as much “fun” as the second one. It has many innovative features as in their more recent work, but differs in several important ways. The most notable is the lack of autotuning, a feature toyed with repeatedly in the second album but blissfully absent in this one. Lead singer Nate Ruess repeatedly demonstrates that he just doesn’t need it. This album, as a whole, is also more innovative than their later work and as such is not as accessible to the average listener. Forget about that. Focus on the fact that this is genuinely good music and ignore the pablum that passes for pop music. Fun. knows what they’re doing. Another fantastic feature is the variety of instrumentation, ranging from electric guitars to violins and from accordions to full brass ensembles. Most groups would synthesize these sounds today but Fun. insists on authenticity and tradition, a position I can only approve of.
The first track, “Be Calm,” lives up to its name even in the more energetic sections. Its initially mellow presentation is one of simple violin harmonies undergirding a complex dialogue, partly external and partly internal, between an emotionally unbalanced young man and his attempts to deal with human relationships in a new setting. “Be Calm” is his mantra for trying to cope with the distancing of modern society, requiring ever more forceful emphasis as things spiral out of control.
“Benson Hedges” opens as a sort of gospel song as much about faith as about modern life and evolves into a more customary rock piece in a fashion not unlike a retrograde Elvis. The overall tone is a critique of the trivialization of culture from both MTV and Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News commentator. The breakdown is as much about his old car as it is about his reaction to trying to cope with the world and human relationships. He crosses literal and metaphoric borders as he heads out into the world away from the urban “canyons” of the city.
The next piece, “All the Pretty Girls (On a Saturday Night)” reminds one of a simpler time and informal performance, indeed including at the beginning seeming chatter which would normally be excluded from a recording. This song continues the theme of being dumped only here it is self-affirming, acknowledging that he’s been used and is trying to move on despite painful reminders from mutual friends. He alternates between longing for a return to the former relationship and dissolution among “all the pretty girls,” literally anyone but his former partner. The song highlights the codependency so common in young relationships that end up damaging as much as defining masculine youth. But, in the end, the independent self wins out against temptation.
The fourth track is a sort of walking song, similar to what one might find in a 70s montage scene of young romance. “I Wanna Be the One” is easily Fun.’s answer to “Your Song” while being far less self-conscious about it. A far more descriptive title thus might be “My Song.” Unlike most love songs, he’s actually talking to and about himself. He’s finally over the former relationship from the previous tracks and is comfortable and self-confident.
The next track is playfully self-indulgent, even including an antiphon using the chord progression from “Ring around the Rosie.” He acknowledges the absurdity of his position, being an indie artist making it big in mainstream music fandom and pointedly makes fun of those fans who questioned his departure from his old band, The Format, as if it were some grand tragedy. “At Least I’m Not as Sad (As I Used to Be)” is a bit of a jest and shouldn’t be taken seriously. That said, this sort of self-referential meta-narrative can be read as the consequences of a complex and evolving relationship between a musician and his fans, not unlike those between a young man and woman in a tempestuous pairing.
“Light a Roman Candle with Me” is a mellow piece which belies its central importance to the theme of the album. The singer is asking a girl to take a chance on him, much as he’s taking a chance by approaching her at all. He’s not looking for “Miss Right” or “Miss Right Now.” He’s looking for someone to share a moment with, even a mundane one like sharing a cup of tea or setting off a fire cracker. The intimacy and particularity of shared moments, haecceity, the here-ness and now-ness of a particular moment or experience, are what he’s focusing on and he wants to share that temporal specificity with someone he cares about. Life is, after all, a succession of moments, each entirely unlike any other. Small joys are best had in company.
“Walking the Dog” is another piece which focuses on the breakup theme. The “dog” here is his continued obsession with his ex-partner though the verb tense use is confusing and conflates past and present. He is mentally castigating her not only for cheating on him and dumping him, but for doing so with one of the “boys of summer” who physically abuses her. The light tone of the song can be misleading but the story is clear on that point. He is still angry but doesn’t believe she deserves this sort of mistreatment.
The eighth track, “Barlights,” is a story of walking home after the bars close. He’s had good night out with friends, playing Bo Peep to their sheep as they amble along, and he feels his confidence renewed with equal parts self-reliance and camaraderie with his friends. Such is the tone of this album overall that suddenly shifts from self-doubt to self-confidence make sense within the total context and makes for a well-blended narrative theme across multiple tracks.
The next piece opens with a piano trill that reminds of a medium-difficulty finger warm-up exercise, and for all that reminds one of chamber music. Instead of being an immediate story, this song is an entire life’s love story, ranging across fifty years of joyful sharing. This song is simultaneously the most joyous and melancholy on the entire album. The singer is in the person of an old man looking back at a long and happy life as his wife is peacefully dying before him.
The final track, though of a very different tone, in many ways continues the last song’s theme to its natural conclusion while integrating it with the rest of the album. “Take Your Time (Coming Home)” mixes the old man with the singer in his own person, each looking back on a life and juxtaposing a life-long love with the tempestuous career of a young musician and fully incorporates the theme only hinted at in track five. Unlike the dumping the singer suffered, the woman’s death is thus a natural progression and result of a life well lived. For both, the message is “If you love somebody, you’d better let them know.”
Aim and Ignite is thus an integrated whole, each song a variation on a single narrative theme. Twice makes a custom, as the saying goes, and Fun. carried over their innovative story-telling techniques, if in somewhat watered down form, from this first album to their second one, Some Nights. If you have yet to listen to Fun.’s first album, do so.
– J. Holder Bennett, KMA Music Historian
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