Fresh from their success at the 55th Grammy Awards where they won Grammy's for "Best Song" and "Best New Artist" Fun. played at The Tabernacle in Atlanta on Friday night to an energetic sell out crowd. Fun. have had two massive hits, "Some Nights" and the Grammy-award winning "We Are Young". There was no doubt that winning the Grammy's just last weekend added something to the crowd's expectation. They weren't disappointed.
The first half of the set built anticipation for the hits everyone knew were coming. By playing some lesser known songs from the second album and some better known ones off the first the band got themselves and the audience warmed up. Opening up with "Out on the Town" from their latest Some Nights album and they quickly followed that with "All the Pretty Girls" and "At Least I'm Not As Sad As I Used To Be".
By the time the band got to "Barlights" and "All Alright" Fun.'s successful formula became very apparent. While Fun. are definitely a pop band they have a distinctive sound that emphasizes a driving bass and heavy drum beat that has resulted in their most popular songs being anthems that encourage or demand audience participation. The crowd, feeding off Nate Ruess's energy were more than happy to cooperate.
"The Gambler" followed with Ruess's vocals backed by an acoustic guitar and piano. The song proved to both a great step back from the frenzy of All Alright and a great launch for the remainder of the show.
"Carry On" was next and thankfully it didn't have the rain shower the live version at the Grammy's had. It's a great song and didn't need the gimmick. "We Are Young" was next and Fun. were accompanied by 2,600 backing vocalists as the entire Tabernacle crowd proved to be just as into it as the band were.
Fun. finished their set by covering one of the greatest rock anthems of all time, the Rolling Stones "You Can't Always Get What You Want" complete with horn introduction played by Andrew Dost. I'm not sure how many of the twenty-something crowd knew who did it originally but they didn't seem to care and it didn't matter because the version was very good and those who knew the words joined in again.
The band came back to finish off the evening with a two-song encore, "Some Nights" and "Stars" which, not surprisingly, had the crowd singing / chanting, dancing and clapping again.
A major part of the experience of a Fun. concert really is participating, singing along and having a blast. Fun. is Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff but they were supported on stage by three others and all six band members were having a great time feeding off the audience's energy who were in turn becoming more enthusiastic as the evening went on.
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