A creepy voice pronounces the word “prologue” in a way I’ve never quite heard it pronounced before. Maybe it’s British, maybe they’re born with it. No time for such sociolinguistical mysteries! Suddenly we’re off under waves of heavy but simple organ. Suddenly there it is again. A voice not entirely unlike Noel Fielding as the goth Richmond Avenal on sitcom The IT Crowd.
At times goofy, there is a level of showmanship that shouldn’t go unappreciated. A few motifs make up the entire work, differentiated by various keyboard settings. But even with the goofy lyrical speech of tracks such as Wormsong and National Ændthem (the latter of which being an intensely melodramatic reworking of The Star-Spangled Banner), Funeral The Musical is a genuinely spooky and haunting adventure in grief and death.
Funeral The Musical may not be such foreign territory for those in puppetry and carnival/freak show revivalist circles, but to those who haven’t lived in one of the hundreds of cities with a ‘Keep ____ Weird’ sticker, well, it may actually be pretty ground breaking stuff.
For fans of: Nurse With Wound, Cornbugs, the videos of David Firth
Like András Cséfalvay? Give these a listen: Myles Manley, Cal Folger Day, Concetta Abbate
The Resident Sound 