I've been putting off writing about this album because I wanted to live with it for a while before forming my (contingently) final opinion on it - it seemed to demand this treatment both because it's been so extremely hyped by the indie press and because it's manifestly such an ambitious record, each of its songs coming across as a distinct statement in its own right.
In the result, my initial response continues to be borne out by subsequent, repeated listening - Funeral is a fantastic album (if not the masterpiece that some have touted it as). It's very immediate - songs like "Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)", "Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)", "Wake Up" and "In the Backseat" all hit on first listen - and continues to sound good when replayed over and over, at least in part because it doesn't contain any weak, or even weaker, songs.
The appeal of the album is hard to sum up - I was drawn in by the spine-tingling, almost-OTT moments of grandeur, but the more energetic and danceable tracks are equally good. It's very epic, but at the same time feels ragged around the edges, as if the human emotion at the heart of these songs is asserting itself against the beautiful cacophony of noise that makes up the main weave of the album. I hear a bit of Talking Heads in the Arcade Fire's music, and a bit of D-Plan, but mainly this is a sound all of their own, and it's pretty magnificent.
