Review Summary: A debut album that showed oh-so much promise. This harks back to when Funeral For a Friend weren't just another average band - this shows that they had talent and sensibility and could perfectly fuse the two. A quality rock CD.
The Welsh. They seem to bear the brunt of an abundance of jokes, mostly regarding sheep and sex in the same context. It all seems a bit unfair - they are a quiet folk, content with watching rugby and going for long country drives amidst the rolling hills of their lush landscape. Oh and of course, lest not we forget - there is no way we are getting our hands on their mud.
In terms of the music that comes out of Wales, you've got the Manic Street Preachers. Most certainly a legendary band. Other notable musical exports include the great Tom Jones - but on the metal and hard rock side of things, the well is a bit dry. Sure, if you're gay enough to think Bullet For My Valentine are good you could always listen to them. But the fact is, Funeral For A Friend
used to be ever so good. Then they released Hours and everything began to slide downhill. However, their debut album was more than impressive. After releasing a couple of EP's (which also proved to be very good), Funeral For A Friend began to breakthrough with this effort. Casually Dressed and Deep In Conversation is a record that showcases a number of the band's strengths yet it was almost inevitable that along with mainstream success would come a change in sound. Unfortunately, this did occur, but not all is lost...
The album opens strongly with
Rookie of the Year, a relatively heavy track which demonstrates a lot of the band's strong points. Frontman Matt Davies has an adequate singing voice whilst not being particularly orgasmic and any harsh/screamed vocals are handled by the drummer Ryan Richards. These are mostly background vocals - fans of screamo are probably best off without this album seeing as 80% of the vocals are cleanly sung. The rhythm section is alright - drumming fits and the bass provides low end and on some tracks breaks out with some simple but refreshing lines. But what makes the band most appealing is the guitar work. Kris and Darran are definitely a competent pairing -
Rookie of the Year has some great, catchy melodic lines and the rhythm guitar is never reduced to dire simplistic open chugging. Whilst nothing is overtly technical, the musicianship presented is admirable. Everyone does their job and more importantly, the band write memorable songs.
What has to be said is that there are two kinds of Funeral For a Friend Songs; very good songs and average/bad tracks. The band are undoubtedly at their strongest when what they are playing borders on metal - point and exhibit the tracks
Bullet Theory Juneau,
Escape Artists Never Die and
She Drove Me To Daytime Television. All have been singles and all for very good reason. The guitar work in all four songs is marvelous - melodic, memorable and interesting. However, the album is marred by the odd track which doesn't add anything to the album -
Storytelling and
Moments Forever Faded are by no means bad tracks. But they are decidedly average.
Other standout points on the album include
Red Is the New Black and the epic album closer
Novella, which even features some nice piano. The former is both catchy and relatively hard hitting - the riffs are good and the singing emotional. All in all, it is just good hard rock music. Even the black sheep of the album (you knew there would be a sheep pun eventually) comes in the form of the unexpected -
Your Revolution Is A Joke is a refreshing listen, featuring great acoustic guitar. Whilst Matt isn't the greatest vocalist in the world, he does perform some emotional vocals - lyrically, everything is relatively cliche, yet nothing is dire. Good enough for me anyway.
In conclusion, whilst they may have taken the wrong road afterwards, the band proved they had talent by the bucketload on their debut album. With the exception of the odd average track, Casually Dressed and Deep In Conversation is a solid and engaging listen. I wouldn't say the quality of their songs is as good as they were on Seven Ways To Scream Your Name (and funnily enough, most of the highlights on this album are re-recordings of songs that appeared on that EP) but nevertheless, this is a good CD to own if you border between the rock and metal genres.
Recommended Tracks
Juneau
Escape Artists Never Die
She Drove Me To Daytime Television
Novella
