Fun. bring the house down at Singapore gig
Indie rock band Fun. performed Friday night to a sold-out crowd of 3,500 at The Coliseum at Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore.
After their introduction, the Grammy winners launched into the kind of song that only true-blue fans would know: "Out On The Town", a bonus track off current album Some Nights. The stage awash in blue, the band got the crowd up and roaring very early on, with fans singing along to vocalist Nate Ruess.
After a sterling mid-tempo turn in "One Foot" that involved some great crowd cheer involvement, the band launched into "All The Pretty Girls" off their first album, "Aim and Ignite". Lead guitarist Jack Antonoff got to show off some insane riffs in this song, which the fans lapped up with crazy screams. Kudos also to instrumentalist Andrew Dost for on-point melodies, never once faltering.
A mixture of old and new
The band switched between old and new albums frequently, with an emotive "Why Am I The One" followed by the throwback "At Least I’m Not As Sad As I Used To Be" before coming back to the current album with "All Alone" and "It Gets Better". Despite the huge number of mid-tempo songs, crowd fatigue did not set in because Ruess knew how to play the crowd.
Unlike other vocalists from bands whose voice gets swallowed by the instrumentals, Ruess’s vocals have the innate ability to soar and punch through the instrumentals, which provided for greater energy throughout the set. Like the rock star he is, Ruess was clearly involved with the experience as well, jumping and running on stage during short breaks in the song.
As is with most acts that explode onto mainstream consciousness with breakout singles, the biggest cheers were reserved for the songs that everyone knew. Huge cheers erupted from the crowd at the first notes of smash hits "All Alright" and "Carry On".
The biggest cheers and singalongs were reserved for "We Are Young", which the audience sang word-for-word in such spiritedness that the audience noise matched the volume of the speakers and managed to swallow Ruess’s voice in the first verse. Slight audience fumbles in singing the wrong lyrics were quickly fixed as Ruess and band egged on the crowd with the right lyrics and an additional four bars of melody. Never once did the band break out of their intensity.
The band’s hallmark: performing live
This was the hallmark of the band: a knack for the stage. They knew which parts to get the crowd to sing along, which parts to tone it down, how to switch up a mid-tempo drag and rouse the fans to the epic moment of the night.
A band that also knows how to play the crowd was also what audiences saw. There was no way audiences were leaving without hearing "Some Nights", so the band came back on stage for an encore and closed it off with a wispy performance of "Stars" that left Ruess slightly choked at the warm reception the band was getting.
Fun.’s performance was the sort of theatric, fist-pumping, heart-thumping, feet-stomping adrenalin rush that you would expect in a concert, where the only way out of the manic was to scream and shout your way through to the highest note.
These boys were made to perform live. Till next time, fellas.
Watch Fun.'s performance of "We Are Young" below:
