Gig review: Fun, Picture House, Edinburgh

“I DIDN’T go to bed until 10am this morning,” chirped Fun’s lead singer Nate Ruess midway through the show, before reassuring, “it’s not what you’re thinking.”

Fun

Picture House, Edinburgh

****

But there’s something about this young New York outfit which doesn’t lend itself to expectations of anything seedy. It was like watching the cast of Happy Days attempt to go rock ‘n’ roll before us.

For a band who made their name via the medium of Glee, with some exposure for the eventual US and UK No 1 We Are Young, however, there was something pleasingly authentic about this bunch.

Despite the recurring presence of a vocoder applied to his voice – a strange but very now instrument to use in a live context rather than the studio – the paisley-shirted Ruess proved to be a frontman of quite infectious vocal and physical energy.

His usual compatriots – guitarist and occasional drummer Jack Antonoff and keyboard player Andrew Dost, as well as a live-only second guitarist and drummer – created a sound that was redolent of 
old-fashioned middle-of-the-road pop at its lacquered finest.

In the woozy, overblown pathos of Barlights and the semi-acoustic anthem The Gambler (which saw Antonoff and Dost sit back-to-back in somewhat overdone best-buds-sitting-jamming fashion) there were hints of acts as wide-ranging as the Feeling, Hall & Oates and Glee old-stagers Journey. We Are Young itself, an anthem to the audience, was eclipsed by the smart, generation-summing dynamics of the great Some Nights and the closing call and response of Stars was set off by Ruess’ promise to return soon – to an even bigger venue, we suspect.