The CLUAS Archive: 1998 - 2011

23

Funeral for a Friend 'Tales Don't Tell Themselves'Review Snapshot:
Funeral For A Friend return with a rock album that shows them trying to be taken serious, but it's hard to when the songs are just not there.

The CLUAS Verdict? 4.5 out of 10

Full Review:
On Tales Don’t Tell Themselves Welsh band Funeral For A Friend move away from their emo beginnings and become an all out rock band. As part of this transformation and they have also attempted to create a concept album. This, their third full length, is a story about a fisherman, named David, who is lost at sea. Excited?

The album starts well with the epic opener ‘Into Oblivion (Reunion)’ raising my hopes for this album. Both ‘The Great Wide Open’ and ‘The Diary’ are also highlights on this album making the first third of this album actually pretty solid as Funeral For A Friend rawk out. After that however, it all goes down hill. ‘The wheels fell off’, as some might say. The album just seems to blend into a mesh of repetitive riffs and annoying whiney vocals. It is a record that musically reminds me of local ‘battle of the bands’ competitions - technically proficient, but lacking any song-writing inventiveness.

The whole nautical theme really grates after a while. It may have seemed like a good idea, but the ‘concept’ is a boring one. My mind just shuts off listening to him sing about raising sails and the open water. It’s about as engaging as the dialogue scenes from Castaway.

They may no longer be emo, or post-hardcore (on that note, what is it with music journalists and putting the word ‘post’ before a genre to make a new one?), but in changing direction, they are now a boring, mainstream rock band. Consequently it may lose them a lot of fans who adored their debut effort, ‘Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation’, and, honestly, I can’t see them finding new legions of devotees as a result of this album.

Garret Cleland


More ...

[Read More...]

Posted in: Album Reviews
Actions: E-mail | Permalink |

Search Articles

Nuggets from our archive

2001 - Early career profile of Damien Rice, written by Sinead Ward. This insightful profile was written before Damien broke internationally with the release of his debut album 'O'. This profile continues to attract hundreds of visits every month, it being linked to from Damien Rice's Wikipedia page.