- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Butler sings like Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood used to play, like a lion-tamer whose whip grows shorter with each and every lash. He can barely contain himself, and when he lets loose it's both melodic and primal, like Berlin-era Bowie or British Sea Power.
-
If I were to have just heard the first half of the disc, I probably would have proclaimed it the best of the year as well.
-
Alternative PressStrikingly beautiful pop songs. [Nov 2004, p.142]
-
"Funeral" is a modest debut, but it hints at a band that sounds like its ready to make a statement over the next several years.
-
BlenderReveals added nuance with every listen. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.102]
-
Funeral... is a resounding success on all levels---the group clearly able to make something incredible out of the familiar, and something inexplicably moving out of one emotionally draining year.
-
One of the most engaging and thrilling pop statements of 2004.
-
“Funeral” is the sort of perfectly-realised record you’d hope from a band at the top of their game. For a debut release it’s unmatched in recent years. Hearing it is to wake from a black and white slumber and to view the world in widescreen Technicolour.
-
Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art-rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way towards justifying the amount of gushing praise that's been heaped upon this album since its September release on Merge last year. The fact that the music is so paradoxically life-affirming and euphoric makes it much easier to write, what now feel like, trite hyperboles.
-
An emotionally wracked masterpiece, drawing on immaculate influences like the Pixies and Talking Heads while sounding distinctly original.
-
Entertainment WeeklyFor the most part, Funeral is a lovely, uplifting, and often pleasingly grandiose whirl through a panoply of sounds. [5 Nov 2004, p.81]
-
Like The Fiery Furnaces' Gallowsbird Park, or Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights, Funeral is a debut record that simply refuses to be ignored.
-
MojoAll the components that make the Arcade Fire such a gripping live proposition remain intact on this full-length debut. [Apr 2005, p.96]
-
New Musical Express (NME)For those of us who still believe in music's power to redeem, 'Funeral' feels like detox, the most cathartic album of the year. [5 Mar 2005, p.49]
-
Not only are the songs uniformly excellent, they also show a mastery of the art of controlled dynamics, of tension and release, that most young bands ignore to pursue the catharsis of sustained intensity.
-
Paste MagazineMusically dynamic and emotionally complex. [#13, p.132]
-
So long as we're unable or unwilling to fully recognize the healing aspect of embracing honest emotion in popular music, we will always approach the sincerity of an album like Funeral from a clinical distance. Still, that it's so easy to embrace this album's operatic proclamation of love and redemption speaks to the scope of The Arcade Fire's vision.
-
The stuff of magic.
-
Funeral is a truly eccentric rock record: bizarre at turns and recognizable elsewhere, equally beautiful and harrowing, theatrical and sincere, defying categorization while attempting to create new genres.
-
Q MagazineIt's so out of step with most indie rock it's as if it's been beamed from outer space. [Apr 2005, p.126]
-
Funeral aches with elegiac intensity.
-
In terms of sheer ambition -- and the realization that if you're going to use strings, you might as well go completely over the top with them -- The Arcade Fire is a promising, unapologetically melodramatic sure bet.
-
Listening to Funeral takes a bit of patience. With most of the songs, the payoff doesn't come right away; in some cases, it sneaks up on you after several spins.
-
It’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.
-
Funeral's layering of sound and wide-eyed posing can be overly dense, and though the band utilizes nice melodies and lively arrangements, the nostalgia-steeped-indie-rock-orchestra pool was pretty much drained before The Arcade Fire dove in.
-
One of the year's best already, by a mile.
-
The New York TimesOne of the year's best indie-rock albums. [3 Oct 2004]
-
One of the best albums of the year, hands down.
-
An energetic and original statement.... Essential.
-
UncutAt times their lurid romanticism can be an acquired taste... But there's an ambition and articulacy here. [Mar 2005, p.104]
-
Funeral is a remarkable record, hard to hear at first, then hard to stop hearing.
-
And that's how the album goes--too fond of drama, but aware of its small place in the big world, and usually beautiful.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 969 out of 1057
-
Mixed: 25 out of 1057
-
Negative: 63 out of 1057
-
MarkLOct 2, 2005One of the best albums of the last decade.
-
MattCJan 11, 2005hands down the best album I've ever heard
-
Sep 8, 2010