Interview with Funeral Suits

Funeral Suits are Brian James, Mik McKeogh, Greg McCarthy y Dar Grant. Their album "Lily of the Valley" was produced by Stephen Street ( The Smiths, Blur). Fridöm spoke with Mik McKeogh about their new album, their videos, Latin America and more...

Artwork by Itzel Toral

Fridöm: Could you tell us a little background about Funeral Suits, how did you guys meet and decide to do music together?

We started playing together about 4 years ago. We'd all played in previous bands when we were teenagers and we drifted together because we wanted to start something new. I was looking for a drummer and i met Greg through an ad i posted on an internet forum. Then a friend who i used to live with introduced me to Brian and Darragh joined a little while after. We needed a fourth set of hands and we all knew Darragh as he'd played in a band with Brian before. We all have similar aspirations and overlapping tastes in music. We fit together pretty well.

Fridöm: Lily of the Valley is the album debut for Funeral Suits; Could you describe the album in 5 words?

The Sound inside our heads

Fridöm: You worked with Stephen Street in this album, how was the experience?

It was great. Stephen is a lovely guy and an amazing producer. I'm sure we were all excited and nervous at the time about the prospect of working with him but he's great at making people feel at ease. We learnt alot working with him and he was very important in helping us get the album out there. With out him i don't know how we would have gone about recording the album, we were very lucky he saw something good in us.

Fridöm: Your videos are very creative and seem to follow a story line, does the entire band participate in the creative process?

We all write songs together. We have different processed though so nothing is set in stone. With videos and art work we like to work with our friends outside the band. Philip Kennedy has been doing our art work since we started out. We've worked with various friends on videos. We like the buzz of interacting with other creative people and sharing a common goal of expressing ourselves and what we're about to the wider population. With the videos for Health, All those friendly people, and Hands down we worked with Shaun Ryan. He grew up with Darragh and Brian. When we made the video for Health we didn't know it was going to be a trilogy of connected stories that idea came later. We actually really would have liked to make a short film as well but I think its too big a project for us to take on right now. We made a trilogy of videos for Colour Fade as well with three videos made by three different people but exploring the same ideas from different angles.

Fridöm: You have been on the road for a while, what do you like to do to have fun? (hobbies, activities).

We like watching films and some TV shows. We all like reading. Some of us like soccer. Some of us have made a hobby of finding the best coffee houses in a city.

Fridöm: Talking about touring, if you had the opportunity to choose 2 bands to tour with, which ones would it be?

The Knife and U2. 

Fridöm: So far, what has been your favorite show?

I'm not sure. We're playing in Clermont ferrand in a week or so and the last time we played there it was pretty special. We always like playing in London and Dublin because they are home to us. Reading festival last summer was a really great experience.

Fridöm: If you had to choose a song from Lily of the Valley that represents you at the moment, which one would it be?

Machines Too

Fridöm: Finally, we heard that you might be coming to Latin America pretty soon? Any dates confirmed?

It´s something we've wanted to do for a long time. We'll be playing a SXSW in Texas in March. When we were offered that the first thing we did was ask the people we work with to find us a show in Mexico. Hopefully that will happen. We'd like to play anywhere in South America where people want to hear our music. We can see that the album has reached a lot of people in South America and we really appreciate the response we've gotten.  Its inspiring and motivating new songs.