fun.

That's right, fun. The band.

They played at Mr. Small's on Saturday night.

I just got familiar with the band this year and I can only say that "fun" is probably the best way to describe their music. It's like a rollicking carnival with free-form melodies, embellished instrumentals, and bittersweet lyrics that loosely follow lead singer's break-up of his former band, The Format.

The show itself had quite a mix of mishaps. Nate the lead singer was bouncing all over the stage and actually ran face-first into his band-mate's guitar during the second song. Check out :26 in the video here.



Their sign apparently wasn't working for most of the show, though later events made me wonder if that was actually part of the act. They finally got it working after a flourish during one of the later songs in the set.

They ended the night without having played the epic first song on their album, Be Calm which was sure to be their encore. So we called them back...but they ended up playing a cover of You Can't Always Get What You Want and left the stage with the sign (as depicted above) conveniently displaying only the "f" and the "u". After a full minute or so of being off-stage, they even got the Mr. Small's crew to start turning the lights back on. Then they finally came out again and finished off with Be Calm.

I personally thought that a whimsical touch to the performance, faking an encore...and I really do think that the sign was not an accident myself. My only real beef with the show was that Nate stopped dramatically in the middle of every damn song. I didn't think it was that necessary and it got old after the first 4 times. But all-in-all, great show - a FUN one where I could sing and dance along.