This Packed Funeral is World/Inferno Friendship Society’s comeback album. For those of you following the saga, the band’s last full-length, The Anarchy and the Ecstasy, was, by design, the band’s most melancholy release. Where they used to laugh with devilish glee as they ran from police and dallied with older women, they were spitting at old band mates and sitting at the side of the Raritan River, alone. There wasn’t any indication that the band was going to end per se, but as they withered down to a “paltry” five members, one did wonder if the sense of fun and mischief heard in their earlier releases have left the band in lieu of “growing up.” But now, along comes This Packed Funeral. The band is still mature, but now they are backed by a powerful sense of confidence and conviction. The result is the band's most ambitious album to date. The side effect, simply, is that once again the band is having fun. A lot of it.
World/Inferno has delivered concept pieces before, namely 2007’s Addicted to Bad Ideas. But, where that was a series of pieces focusing on one man, this release is a massive swing. Set at the wake of Grace Talicious, the singer for a band called The Paranoid Style who was recently hit and killed by a bus, the album presents ten songs that are either from the perspective of people at Talicious’ funeral or covers of The Paranoid Style. But, like the best concept LPs, Packed Funeral can be dissected line-by-line, trying to parse out meanings behind meanings, (such as “No people like show people/At least not any people I know” from “Dolce Far Niente") or it can be taken as just a series of songs. That is, there is story here, but it doesn’t bumble up the actual music with too many trappings or explanation...[more]
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