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8:34 · 1,304 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The album was made during a run of deaths in the band's families, with Richard Reed Parry's aunt, Regine Chassagne's grandmother and the Butler brothers' grandfather all dying within a year.
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- They named it Funeral because of that, noting the irony of a debut carrying a title that means an ending.
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- The sound is minimalist underneath the size of it: simple motifs, largely static harmony, almost everything in 4/4, and standard verse-chorus shapes carrying very eclectic material.
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- The emotional mechanism is pressure and release, with choruses written as eruptions out of the structure rather than as refrains.
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- The tempo climbs measurably through the opening track, from about 111 beats per minute at the intro to 115 by the first verse and 120 by the second.
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- By the first chorus it reaches roughly 130, so the listener's mood has already been moved by the arrangement before any chorus arrives.
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- The verses tighten as they go, each second line shifting up half an octave and carrying about twice the syllables of the first.
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- The third verse packs the most syllables of all, so the final release coincides with the singer hitting the limit of his own voice.
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- The outro brings back the opening arpeggio as a ghost of itself, which makes the climax a resolution rather than just a louder ending.
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- The conclusion is that the record is about renewal rather than death, the funeral treated as a beginning and a vow to live for the people who are gone.
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