Right up there with the Who in the not Google friendly stakes.

So we here at Volume Knob receive quite a few (read: a hell of a lot) of of e-mails from press release type people excited about their bands. And I'm the first to admit that I am maybe not quite as diligent as I should be about reading them. But when a subject line announcing a new band featuring members of The Format caught my eye, I clicked.

Now, the format. 2006's Dog Problems was a very good album (not their only one, but the only one I'm familiar with), but it just resonate with me. Don't get me wrong, I wanted it to. I really wanted it to. Clever lyrics, very catchy, well sung; all the things I love. But, you just can't force yourself to love an album, you know? (Or well, I mean, you can sometimes. Like, with Rufus Wainwright's self titled, I was unsure of it but I made myself listen to it over and over and it just clicked with me. But I guess deep down i felt a connection to it, and that's why I kept pressing play. I had no such compulsion with Dog Problems).

But scanning the press release I was reminded of how much I wanted to love the Format, so I figured I'd give this new band, annoyingly named "fun." a try. (I say annoyingly because have you ever tried googling a band named fun.? True fact: It's not fun). After no small amount of fiddling about, I was finally able to download their first and as far as I can tell only single: At Least I'm Not As Sad (As I Used To Be).

It was everything I wanted the Format to be, and then some. Catchy, and I'm talking insanely catchy here peopele. Like, a slow ten seconds at the start and them BAM! It's catchy city. A little bit of Vampire Weekend-sh reggae (speaking of Vampire Weekend, have you noticed that it's only now that bands are starting to borrow from them? Reming me to post about this Hungry Kids From Hungary band I was listening to the other day...), with male and female vocals complimenting each other nicely. And it's a very inteesting song, it's like a whole album crammed into a mere four minutes. It's slow, then it's catchy (did I mention that it's catchy?) then it's all sweeping and epic. But of course, this is only one song. When the band finally releases a whole album (September is the date I'm seeing thrown around a lot) it will either live up to the promise of this song, or, well, it wont. I guess we'll just have to see. But I, for one, am excited about it.

At Least I'm Not As Sad (As I Used To Be) : fun.

Come On Eileen (Live Dexy's Midnight Runners cover; the quality is not %100, but it's still very cool and, well, fun.) : fun.