Review :

In Tales Don’t Tell Themselves, Funeral for a Friend have penned their catchiest, most mainstream-friendly album to date. The band’s previous album, 2005’s Hours, saw Bridgend’s emo-tinged rockers soften their sound slightly, hardcore breakdowns and shrieked metal vocals receding, and a more tuneful, melodic edge coming to the fore. On Tales, Funeral walk further down this road. There’s little trace of the angry hardcore tykes who wrote songs like "The Art of American Football," but songs like "Into Oblivion (Reunion)" and the Smashing Pumpkins-tinged "Open Water" are presented with the sort of anthemic widescreen that suggest My Chemical Romance should watch their back.

Elsewhere, though, there’s signs of a growing songwriting maturity that might one day spring F4AF out of the punk ghetto for good : Matt Davies’s lyrics reach far beyond emo’s typical boy-meets-girl concerns, individual tracks linked by a narrative about a shipwrecked fisherman desperate to be reunited with his family, while the violin peaks and mighty drum rolls of "Raise the Sail" suggest Funeral for a Friend are eager to extend their musical palette. An impressive evolution.

Track listing :