“It’s really taken from a Planes Mistaken For Stars song, but we went through a phase of pretending to pay homage to Elton John” explains FFAF guitarist Darran, as Gigwise puts it to the Kerrang award-winning rock five piece that the rumour mill is running rife about a collaboration with the master of their namesake, the Elton-meister.
“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea” muses bassist Gareth; “I can imagine us all crooning round that piano!”. Gigwise agrees that they certainly would give the boys from Blue a run for their money, but is somewhat perturbed by the thought as Gareth only seems to be half joking. Darran wishes, in fact, that they'd taken it from the Hair-Transplanted One himself, as he explains the band were on the receiving end of “some pissed off vibes” from PMFS after not going to say ”hi” to them when sharing a bill a couple of years back.
“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea” muses bassist Gareth; “I can imagine us all crooning round that piano!”. Gigwise agrees that they certainly would give the boys from Blue a run for their money, but is somewhat perturbed by the thought as Gareth only seems to be half joking. Darran wishes, in fact, that they'd taken it from the Hair-Transplanted One himself, as he explains the band were on the receiving end of “some pissed off vibes” from PMFS after not going to say ”hi” to them when sharing a bill a couple of years back.
And so it is that we find ourselves in Funeral’s dressingroom on a sunny Monday afternoon, just before the guys go on to rock the Norwich UEA with their melodious noise. Hundreds of hardcore fans are already lining the campus with hopes of catching a glimpse of their new favourite Welsh lads, who are just kicking off a mamouth post-US tour to plug their epic second release, ’Hours’. Self confessed lazy asses, the guys have not spent their relative break pumping iron in the gym or swapping burgers for mung beans, and as a result, have found the return to touring pretty hard; “It’s great to get back on the road again. It’s going really good, but fuck! We were struggling with the first couple of shows! Last night in Newcastle was by far the hottest gig we have ever played in our lives! Absolutely unbearable. By the end of the first track we were absolutely soaking wet! We played probably the longest set we’ve ever played, 16 songs. I was on the floor!”
Clearly Darran was not the only member feeling the heat, but Gareth explains that their fitness levels will never impinge on a show; “We can’t cut it down that much, it’s really difficult you know. I mean, we have two albums and a couple of EP’s and songs we wanna do from it all. So we did like, 13 songs in the set and came back and did three more in the encore. We’re like; ‘we don’t wanna drop that one, we’ve gotta play that one, we can’t not play this one’, so the set list just grows! We ended up with 16 songs, we hate playing encores. But we had to come off for a minute. We were dead! Gotta come off for a minute or two to dry off!” With the move away from screamo Emo, Gigwise wonders just how the new album is going down at these live shows, and if the crowd are getting just as knackered as the band; “It takes people a while to get to know them (the songs). We kinda realised that. They’ve been going down really well. Some stronger than others.” And although proud of their newer work, guitarist Darran goes on to explain how it’s actually been some of the tracks from their debut release, ‘Casually Dressed And In Deep Conversation’ that have proved to hook in the American crowd during their recent assult on the States; : “We love ‘Red Is The New Black’. ‘RITNB’ is always good. Always a winner! In a way it’s become the staple of the set really. We always position it around the middle. That song seemed to be a real turning point when we played the States. Half way through and they’re not too sure, but we get to that song, it really turns the audience around. And ‘Juneau’ as well. Even when we were playing in the armpit of South Wales somewhere, it’s always been one for everyone to sing along to, and the crowds over here as much as in the US jump on that.”
So the screamo thing is clearly a winner, heavy vocals and melodic chorus’s all the way, baybeh!!! But apparently not, as a listen to Hours proves. Darran has a bit of a rant, and ‘Wise gets the feeling its direced at the new Emo bandwagon bandits; “The screaming verses and sung choruses, it’s so contrived nowadays. When we started it was fresh, but now it’s become cliched. I mean we never sat down and said; “we are gonna drop the screamo.” It’s just the songs don’t demand it anymore. We can’t hear a place in the song that needs it now. There may be some parts where Ryan’s doing some heavy vocals but that’s because it works. It fits. We don’t do it just to fit into that cliché. Songs in general have no plan. They write themselves.”
Reflecting on this, Gareth adds; “after writing this record we’ve had loads of messages from people and emails saying things like; ‘now you’ve stopped screaming you sound like shit’. But we’re like, at the end of the day, you know, there are so many bands out there dong the screaming bit. So many. We decided that when we started writing this record we were gonna go for a division between the people that just love the screamo bits and the rest of the music. Either fucking love us or hate us. Now we’ve dropped the screaming element, we can see a lot of the segregation. Because coming from the EPs to Casually Dressed…a lot of people were like ‘oh you’re not as heavy anymore’. So we’ve completely cut away that key audience that wanna hear that stuff.”
Reflecting on this, Gareth adds; “after writing this record we’ve had loads of messages from people and emails saying things like; ‘now you’ve stopped screaming you sound like shit’. But we’re like, at the end of the day, you know, there are so many bands out there dong the screaming bit. So many. We decided that when we started writing this record we were gonna go for a division between the people that just love the screamo bits and the rest of the music. Either fucking love us or hate us. Now we’ve dropped the screaming element, we can see a lot of the segregation. Because coming from the EPs to Casually Dressed…a lot of people were like ‘oh you’re not as heavy anymore’. So we’ve completely cut away that key audience that wanna hear that stuff.”
With Gigwise actually walking in on the tail end of a Funeral ‘disagreement’, they can hardly deny the occassional tense moment within their little family, and bless them, they don’t even try to excuse it, but they do explain that “it’s only because we all give a shit” (about the music, we presume).” I mean, any band really. 5 individuals constantly living together and stuff. Apart from writing music, just generally being together. Yeah there’s arguments but there’s compromises too. We just want every song to be the best one we’ve written, and that’s why we have arguments about it. It’s with the best intentions at heart.”
Gigwise advises that paper, scissors, stone is by far the fairest way to settle any battles arising from the creative meeting of minds. FFAF take note. The arrival of 'Hours' marks the departure of such creative rifts, as Darran reminisces on the mitigating stresses surrounding the recording of ‘Casually Dressed'…’” With 'Casually Dressed' we were all blagging our way into a contract and told our record company we had a ton of songs, so they booked us into the studio for the next week, and we were like; “Shit! We have three songs!” That was quite stressful! I mean, we’re a lot stronger. We all write together now which helps a lot. And with this album, it was a lot more relaxed. We were able to be a lot more open to letting our influences in on this album, such as Depeche Mode.”
Time may well have matured for Hours, but the striking, evocative images which command the artwork are still undoubtedly rooted in Funeral’s original recipe. “We’ve always been about striking images. We like to create a reaction. Get people questioning things. We have a lot of input.” The band are clearly very proud (and rightly so) of the new 'Hours' artwork, which photographs a blonde girl through the decades, and in Gareths’ own words; “depicts the loss of innocence”, although he admits that “it didn’t go down so well in the US, because of all the high school shootings (the final, modern day image sees the girl wearing knuckle dusters and a bullet proof vest). A lot of places over there won’t play our records because of it”. 
