fun. is one of those bands that take all the music that they love, throw it in a blender, and pour the resulting mixture into an album. In this case, the album is called Aim and Ignite (Nettwerk), and while the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts, it’s an interesting and unusual listen.
The band’s main strength is to be found in the songwriting. The production is another story. There’s nothing basic about this album, and Mies van der Rohe’s famous proclamation “Less is more” did not figure into this particular equation. There are strings galore, multilayered vocal harmonies throughout, horns, oboes, and accordions here and there, and even the appearance of a calliope on one track.
I’ve never been much of a Queen fan. There were a few songs that I like, but I always thought they sounded, well, goofy. fun., on the other hand, are obviously big Queen fans, and while modern recording technology (and basic good taste) has allowed them to improve on Queen’s cheesier sounds, it still sounds, to some extent, like Queen to me. It sounds cute. I don’t like cute. I don’t know, maybe I need to lighten up. The sounds of ELO and Jellyfish are among the blended ingredients too, but on “Walking the Dog,” fun. relies on the more current influence of Vampire Weekend. Then again, Vampire Weekend got it from Paul Simon, and he got it from musicians in South Africa, and they got it … (more…)
Some things just don’t go quite the way they’re planned. For instance, I was supposed to be over the moon and in love with U2’s latest album, No Line on the Horizon. While I’m not as down on it as I was when I heard the first single, “Get On Your Boots,” the thing got five perfunctory plays and has been shoved back into the rack ever since. Meanwhile, a friend slips me a USB flash drive and tells me (commands, more like) to listen to the album Moon Rock by Paul Steel. I know not of this Steel person, and the album cover seems to foreshadow something really, really cheeky. I’m not in the mood for cheeky lately, so the plan was to give the thing a run-through, give my friend the necessary thank-you’s and advise him I’m just not into albums that have Nintendo-like graphics for cover art (this means you, Architecture in Helsinki.)
(2007) is the most addictive album I’ve heard in years, the picture of power-pop primacy, and it’s already a couple years old. Worse, it has not migrated officially from Steel’s native England yet, so the good folks at 
A word of note to anyone who is not a music nerd accidentally finding themselves at this site: a cover song is when an artist records another artist’s song, hence covering it. The term ‘remake’ fits as well. The term ’smart-ass’, at least relative to this article, refers to those who decide to go all hipster and record something that bears no relevance, charm or wit toward their own sensibility. I’m thinking of Madonna’s cover of “American Pie” or that godawful A Perfect Circle CD where the songs weren’t just reworked, they were worked over, until all that was left was roadkill disguised as tribute. Then there’s the Bluegrass Tribute to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. More notoriously, I’m thinking of the late-’50s pop songs from black artists covered by teen idol white artists because, you know, if it comes from a white guy in a sweater, the subtext can’t be about sex. Right? Pat Boone? Tutti Frutti?
Instincts run hot and cold, depending on who is relying on them. Some artists go against the grain and it works out fantastically for them. Some make last-minute choices that, while not haunting them forever, certainly don’t help them a hell of a lot. Ben Folds runs somewhere in the middle.