So we caught up with Funeral for a Friend back in Cardiff earlier this month and sat them down for a few minutes.
What’s it like coming back home to Wales?
Kris: It’s nice for me cause I live in London. It’s always nice to come back, see family, see friends, catch up with people.
Pat: I live here, so it’s not really coming home for me.
Kris: We’ve been off for a month.
Pat: Home will be London for me.
Kris: We did a change. I moved to London, he moved to Wales.
Did you chose the venues for this tour?
Kris: It’s done between the promoter and our booking agent. But obviously if we’re doing dates in the UK, we wanted to do a Welsh show. It’s seems like for the last few years every time we play here, it always seems like we play Swansea, we play Aberystwyth, we never seem to play Cardiff. Which is very bizarre considering Cardiff is the capital of Wales. But we definitely wanted to do it, so when the uni came through, here we are.
First day to today of tour, you excited?
Kris: Yeah, should be good. Considering it’s the first day of tour we’re all a bit tired, which doesn’t make sense.
Pat: We were in the studio doing top secret stuff last week which kinda took up more time than expected, so hasn’t aided tour preparation time. So instead of having time for the studio, doing writing and that, we went straight from the studio to rehearse for this tour, so it was all kinda like one solid week and we didn’t have a week off before tour.
Kris: Yeah pretty much
Pat: So yeah, we’re tired but yeah it’s all good.
So it’s been 10 years since your first album, how have you changed since then?
Pat: 60% of the band is different. Sound of the band is different I suppose.
Kris: Yeah nothing stays the same forever. It means we’d have to keep writing the same record over and over again. So when people ask us why we don’t write songs like Casually Dressed anymore, it’s because it would mean re-writing that songs that were on Casually Dressed. But anything we write won’t sound like Casually Dressed because it’s not a song off it. I think the way the band has changed is we’ve come back to a place where we feel comfortable and playing music we’re passionate about and that’s why we wanted to be in a band in the first place.
Does it feel weird playing Casually Dressed in it’s entirety after all these years?
Kris: We’re not doing it this time round. We did it when Darran left and we said we’re not doing it again. It just feels like it’s probably one too many times. We’re actually playing our first two EP’s in their entirety.
What made you bring those back?
Kris: We’re recently rereleasing between order and model on 7” vinyl. For that we did a bunch of live recordings and we enjoyed them, so we decided it’d be fun to have all these songs in the set. Realistically, off both EP’s we already play like 4 songs anyway. So it’s just a case of adding the other songs in that we hardly ever play. So it just seemed like a good idea, we thought it’d be fun.
So what are Funeral for a Friend’s plans for next year?
Pat: To write and record stuff
Kris: To write and record a new record.
Pat: Maybe touring. I don’t think we’re gonna take a big break between stuff, basically writing and recording and then touring again.
Kris: I think it’ll be select dates next year. Maybe not as heavy as it’s been this year cause we’ve done something like 158 dates or something this year.
