Cat Amongst The Pigeons

Anyone else hear Green Day in the new Pure Love single?

fun. - Some Nights (Album Review)

         

          All music is relative. Every day, we use the filters of genre to compare and contrast in relative terms – and with good reason. Furthermore, we hold pre-conceived notions of what a certain genre entails. For example, in our modern age it is perceived that any artist capable of holding an instrument and using it to good effect must belong to the rock, rather than pop, variety. Things were not always so. fun. might just return us to such a golden age for mainstream music. For all their credible connections to the heavier genre, the band are  more HelloGoodbye than Panic at the Disco. This is pop music and indeed, it should be embraced as so, because ‘Some Nights’ has the potential to standardise the future product delivered across the genre – as all great records should do. And in turn, it shall be treated in terms relative to its genre.

          Relative to pop music, this is Champions League stuff. Yet, if we were to treat it in absolute terms, it would fade into mid-table obscurity. For the foibles of the genre continue to frustrate. The release is over-reliant on the theatrical and the use of auto-tune persists on pushing me towards the edge. It’s just that the average 21^st century pop record is so dire, so devoid of passion and talent that any record which dares to venture into new heights is instantly propelled right to the top of the proverbial tree. As such, the masterful vocal harmonies of the two-part title track and the inspirational power ballad ‘We Are Young’ are just begging to fill arenas currently occupied by the latest talked-up, talentless arsehole. Relative to the stagnation of pop music, this record is creeping into 8/10 territory. There is hope for the genre yet.

                                                                                                        8/10

          Chris Smith