Funeral For a Friend on 20 years of Casually Dressed and Deep in Conversation

Twenty years ago, Funeral For a Friend were living on their wits. A fast-rising post-hardcore band out of Bridgend, South Wales, they had signed to a major label after putting out a brace of EPs that displayed a heavy, hooky, mid-Atlantic sound dotted with American emo and hardcore influences, from Gorilla Biscuits to Boysetsfire and Jimmy Eat World. So far, so fun. But once the ink was dry on their deal, reality set in. “We told the label we had more songs than we did,” vocalist Matt Davies-Kreye recalls with a laugh. 

A feverish period of writing followed as the group sought to conjure a full-length from the ether. Material from their early releases was bolstered by ideas old and new — as the clock ticked, rehearsal room jams met teenage bedroom riffs halfway. “It was full of moments like that: nervous energy and the slight feeling that the rug was gonna get pulled from under our feet,” Davies-Kreye says.

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But this frantic approach also tapped into a vein of hardcore history — it ensured that Funeral For a Friend preserved the haphazard energy of a band figuring out who they are on the fly. The end result was Casually Dressed and Deep In Conversation, a lightning-in-a-bottle debut album that in another timeline could have served as an all-killer discography comp. “So we were like 90% of my favorite bands, then,” Davies-Kreye cackles. “One record and fuck off!”

The LP went top 20 in the U.K. and soon had them on the road with everyone from Iron Maiden to My Chemical Romance. “There’s a purity to that method of making music that I don’t think we really captured again — we didn’t want to fuck anything up. We just did it,” he observes. With the band set to embark on a massive Casually Dressed… anniversary tour this month, we caught up with the singer over Zoom to get his thoughts on short deadlines, confidence-boosting stagecraft, and the state of play in modern hardcore.

What one emotion stands out for you looking back at Casually Dressed…?

I guess I’m proud. I feel a sense of achievement. This is not me saying it, but people consider it a landmark album in the genre, especially for the U.K. scene at the time. That’s really something.

Did the speed of the whole experience distort any of the enjoyment for you?

It was such a hurricane environment that you didn’t really have any chance to take anything in. You couldn’t fully enjoy the positive stuff because it was never around long enough, and any negativity was rushed away because you were on to the next thing. We seemed to always be on tour. We made a record, and that whole process was so new and exciting for us, and then suddenly here we were headlining the Astoria, and we’re in the U.S. for the first time. Every time I talk with the guys about those times, it’s, “Remember so and so, or that period?” I feel like we’re all granddads having a fucking campfire chat.

The condensed timeframe also allowed you to document a particular time and place lyrically.

I don’t like ruining people’s ideas of songs, or what it means to them, because they are vague enough that anybody could associate any moment in their life to it. But it’s very adolescent, I think. There are very early leanings into politicizing things and feeling out my own narrative. I was on that verge of breaking out of teen angst poetry into informed awareness as a human being in the world. 

Casually Dressed… was also a cool instance of a local scene chiming with a wider movement — there were a lot of bands in South Wales at that time pushing each other on, but the music dovetailed with what was coming out in the broader post-hardcore world.

If you think about right place, right time, every creative scene is full of those moments. This was very specific, the whole post-Jimmy Eat World wave of things into My Chemical Romance, Thursday, all those bands that we loved. It’s a very fortunate position for any band to be pulled along by that momentum, and then for it to be internationally recognized. When I’m onstage, I always pretend that I’m my favorite singer from my favorite band instead of me. We had a very American sound, and I sing with an American accent. When you grow up listening to a lot of American hardcore bands, it forms part of who you are and what you’re comfortable with. So a lot of people from back home, initially, were totally unaware that Funeral for a Friend was a Welsh band. It’s one of those magical things where geographically you couldn’t really place us.

So in that onstage scenario, who are you emulating?

I could pick Garrett Klahn from Texas is the Reason. I could pick Geoff Rickly from Thursday. I could pick Jonah Matranga from Far and Onelinedrawing or Ari [Katz] from Lifetime or Vinnie [Caruana] from the Movielife. These are all people who, in some shape or form, I’ve shared stages with as well. It’s a bit weird, but that’s the way my brain facilitated the idea of me being on a stage in front of people. I’m very shy. It was almost like a comfort blanket, to project confidence into myself.

Hardcore is having a moment right now — which band would you want to tour with if you were starting out today?

Excide’s record really encapsulates a lot of stuff that I love about hardcore and the scene that I grew up in. Bands like Helmet and Quicksand are very much at the forefront of my influences, and I love their take on it. I love Buggin from Chicago [and] Spaced from Buffalo. Really fun, energetic, positive music. I love Scowl. I think what they’re doing with the new material is really cool. I am fortunate enough that I’ve decided to work with bands [at Avocado Booking] that I love on a musical level. Going Off from Manchester, Out of Love, and High Vis are great.