Review Summary: What could have wound up a discombobulated catastrophe, "Some Nights" succeeds on every level, and ultimately forges it's own place in musical history.
Fun. is no longer delegated to the never ending pile of artists that are the "next big thing". No, with their sophomore album, the band has crashed onto the charts, and deservedly so. The album is one of the most inventive and eclectic in quite some time. Somehow managing to blend the grandiosity of Queen and My Chemical Romance with the hip-hop flair and artistic ambition of Kanye West, the album is truly a treasure. What could have wound up a discombobulated catastrophe, "Some Nights" succeeds on every level, and ultimately forges it's own place in musical history.
The album opens fittingly with "Some Nights(Intro)", which is really the first place that many preconceived notions are shattered. In the orchestrated style of any track off of "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy", mixed with Queen-esque harmonies and frontman Nate Ruess angst-filled ranting about society and why it is that he cannot sleep. This track acts very much as a welcoming into the sonic world that Fun. has created and from here, all bets are off.
Seguing into "Some Nights", a song with an African back beat reminiscent of anything on Paul Simon's "Graceland, the album truly takes off and never looks back. "We are Young", the band's current chart-topper, sounds even better and stronger in context.
While I'm sure there are many out there who assume that "We Are Young" is the best track off the album, I'm here to tell you you're wrong. In fact Fun. proves this point with the next song. "Carry On" is an ingenious song, starting off acoustic and growing into a bombastic beauty.
"It Gets Better" is not nearly as much of a tender track as i expected from such a name, incorporating digital drums and synth into what becomes a synth-pop track with a little bit of a possible dub-step style influence. None of this is to say it's a bad song, it actually sounds like a completely natural follow up to "Carry On' in a very strange, wacked out way. It is from here that the album becomes flawless and pretty unbelievable.
Songs like "Why am I the One", "All Alone", "All Alright", and "Stars" show the bands natural knack for finding moving melodies and tapping into something many thought was long gone from music. They sound genuinely inspired throughout the whole album and Nate Ruess' lyrics are very interesting and add another dynamic to the mixing pot.
By the time final track "Stars", fades off into the darkness, the curtain has fallen on not just some sort of odd musical experiment, but on a fleshed out musical aspiration and a band that just may save the fairly awful current music industry. Fun. has the the talent and ambition to become a staple in the music industry. Here's hoping that they do, because their album is easily the best of 2012 so far, and they're so much more talented than most artists still on the charts.
