It was vocalist Matt Davies’ fear of water that planted the initial seed for his band Funeral For A Friend’s latest record Tales Don’t Tell Themselves. While he originally only wrote a few songs exploring his phobia, the band soon came together to write an album dedicated to a fictional castaway at sea. While it may seem that a band might take a more methodical approach in creating a concept record, guitarist Kris Coombs-Roberts said it was quite the opposite. Individual songwriting sessions were replaced with the band sitting together in a room, basically just jamming out.
What came out of those songwriting sessions doesn’t really sound like your typical rock band, however.
Funeral For A Friend went for a grander quality fit for a movie score, not to mention a concept record.
Coombs-Roberts talked with UG writer
Amy Kelly about scaling down his playing, while the band as a whole fully embraced the “
more is more” mantra.
UG: Tales Don’t Tell Themselves is a fairly large move away from Hours. What made you initially decide to record a concept album?
Kris: It originally came from a song we wrote in the very first batch of ideas we had. It was a song called “All Hands On Deck.” The song was about this ship in the storm, and it was only an idea. We didn’t really toy about the idea of doing a concept record or anything else at the time. It was just the subject matter, which Matt (Davies, vocals) came up with for one individual song. Basically we ended up taking some time off when we came back. The first song we wrote when we came back continued the story. It was like we never really sat down and initially intended to write a concept record. If we had sat down at the very beginning and we all would have pushed to do a concept record, I don’t think we would have been able to do it the way we had done it. It came quite naturally.
Matt came up with the lyrics for the second song called “All Hands On Deck Part II.” It was the story of this ship in the storm and it being destroyed. Then the other song is about the guy waking up on his own in the middle of the ocean. It comes from Matt’s fear of water, the whole sort of concept of the song. The ocean terrified him, so he was thinking about what would be the worst thing that could happen to him. It was strange then because I would be continuing to write for the other songs, which make up the record now. Matt would be slowly developing this whole storyline and started building characters all around it.
It was quite strange because it’s for something which should be really pre-done and thought out before. It’s something a lot of bands do sit down and discuss. It was quite the opposite for us, being really natural. The album basically wrote itself.
Did Matt usually start out the writing process with his storyline or could song ideas come about from just a riff?
The whole experience of writing was completely different from what we have done in the past. Usually it’s like myself, Darran (Smith, guitars), or Matt will come up with an idea, or we pretty much have structured a whole kind of song together before everyone else even got there to take the song. For this we decided we wanted to do every song when everyone was there. It was quite strange because initially we had a bit of a drought. I think we wrote 11 songs and we weren’t really happy about the direction the songs were going in. We felt that we were kind of treading the same old ground, which we’ve already done. We felt like we weren’t really pushing our boundaries or saying anything about the band. It just felt like we were going through the motions.
It was weird because then Matt, in the middle of it all, he decided that instead of trying to write a song for the record, we would just kind of jam out to music or whatever. We ended up writing - in 60 minutes - concepts which were not related to the concept. It was quite strange. We ended up breaking with that concept because it was like a 16-minute piece of music with all these different parts. We kind of approached it more soundtrack-ish.
Were there any times when the band would butt heads about where the story or music was headed?
Basically we realized what felt natural and what was working and what wasn’t working. We never really clashed heads or had any major arguments over it. We had the record and we had all of the songs. It was like sort of playing it up for the story. The biggest argument we had was the whether or not to put the running order of the album in the order of which the lyrics tell the story, or if it was best to mix it up and everything else. We never really sat down and argued about like sections of songs and stuff. It kind of did feel pretty natural.
I think “The Sweetest Wave” was the one song where it’s the kind of song where you’re going to have disagreements about. There are so many parts to it and the song is like 6 ½ or 7 minutes long. Within that we sat down and it was like, “What are we going to do with it? Where are we going to take it?” I think that was the one we disagreed on the most until we got it the way it was.
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| "It was like we never really sat down and initially intended to write a concept record." |
As a guitarist, did you want to enhance the concept album with new equipment or effects?
I think for this record. In the past, I’ve been very, very guilty as far as cramming too much into one idea. So whenever I’ve written ideas, I tend to go on my own. You’ve only got so much time to spend with the song on your own. You fill in the gaps where you should be leaving them for other people to fill in. I feel in the past I’ve been very, very guilty of doing that. For this record, my whole approach was that I needed to step back a little bit more and not do so much. Then other people would fill in. That was one of the great things about going into write. Actually not having any ideas collected up, not really having any riffs collected. It was just clear heads.
You don’t get any opportunity to overthink an idea. There’s a moment and you play something there. It was nice to me, as a player, to take the approach of less is more. It’s also riff-orientated and definitely not so busy. Working with Gil Norton (producer) was something I was excited about. So we started writing the songs and realized that all the songs, which we’ve had that we had been using on the previous 2 records, they weren’t really fitting to what we were doing exactly. So when we went into record the record, it was not like I actually used the same setup on every song. There was like a different combination of amps or different guitars or whatever. I didn’t do the same for like the whole record. I was changing constantly around.
Can you give an example of the different amp setups that were used for a few songs?
I think there’s one thing that I can tell you. It’s a combination where we attached the guitar tones around it. That combination I used a Vox AC30. It’s a track that’s incredibly loud and you’re pushing the gain out of it. Then there’s this really old amp, an Ampeg which you can’t get anywhere. They discontinued them and Matt bought it for like 250 pounds on Ebay. It just sounds incredible. He bought 2 amp heads before we went into the studio. He bought like an amp head and a cab. I think he paid for like 600 pounds for all of it. Me and Darran have gone through countless cabs and countless amps, so we just go on Ebay and find these amazing amps. We’ve been jealous of his equipment because they don’t make them anymore. It’s going to be hard work to find anything.
We also used the JCM 900. I used a Bogner Uberschall. I used Peavey as well - I think it was a Peavey combo. There was a Marshall, a reissue of like an old handwired Marshall combo. I ended up using that for something as well. Basically everything was set up in a room and it was all miked up. It was basically patching in the different amp heads to see what fit it best for each song. It was a lot of gear!
Did you also have a wide variety of pedals to choose from at the studio?
Darran is more into the pedals. I like to be quite straight-up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way other people use them. It’s just for me personally, it’s not something I’ve ever really been into. I think I used a chorus, just to maybe color the clean songs a little bit more. That was pretty much it.
It sounds like it’s the pure sound of the guitar that defines your playing. Was there one guitar that you relied on it for the recording?
At the moment, I’m playing PRS. I really got into them recently. I’ve always been a big fan of the Gibson Les Pauls. That’s sort of what I used to record the 2nd album with. PRS got in touch with us to work with us, and there’s obviously a big court case going on with them and Gibson quite recently. It’s strange because they feel completely different. When I first started playing it, it felt strange. But the more I played it, obviously the more I got used to it. Now when I play a Les Paul, the Les Paul feels weird to me. I recorded pretty much all of my tracking with the tobacco burst Paul Reid Smith Single Cut.
Another big thing with PRS is they’re really cool and they’re very up for helping out new bands and stuff. I know Gibson is not so much into giving endorsements. PRS, they’re a lot more artist-friendly, I feel. The guitars themselves are incredible. The price tag on them is justifiable! They’re workhorses and they feel indestructible as well.
I read that Tales Don’t Tell Themselves marks the first time that Matt has played guitar on a studio recording. What kind of effect did that have on your guitar tracks?
Matt has had songs in the past if you know what I mean. He came up with the guitars, like the main riff for a song called “Street Car.” It’s a song he came up with the main idea for. So it’s not something foreign to see him playing guitar. The fact is he can play guitar and we wanted to work more with the arrangements of songs and the orchestration of it. It just made things a lot more interesting, I feel. It didn’t feel at anytime like breaking him in. It was taking away space. It just felt like we were bringing in another layer. He’s a good player as well, which is helpful! He’s a very solid rhythm player. To actually have all 3 of us playing at the same time, it felt exciting to do.
Did you bring in a string orchestra for a few songs or is that all synthesizer?
On 3 songs there is a 28-piece string orchestra and then a 10-voiced choir. It’s quite strange because before we went for less is more. But then with the album, we kind of went for more and more. We kind of pretty much threw everything we could think of in. There’s piano on there. Ryan plays piano, so we have all this piano work on the album that Ryan (Richards, drums) recorded. We initially started doing the ideas and Ryan would bring in an idea on piano. Then we’d sit down and translate it to guitars and everything, sort of build layers upon that.
I think the orchestra was an idea which we were talking about getting. We were discussing “Sweetest Wave” and “Raise The Sail” and “Into Oblivion.” We were discussing maybe getting some strings on there. We ended up talking to Gil, and Gil was like, “Yeah, that would be brilliant. We’ll get like a 28-piece string section.” We were just like, “Really?” We were thinking more like 4 violins! But it was just incredible, going to a studio and to watch them. They were all from like the London Symphony Orchestra and they’re just incredible musicians. To go in and see them work on 3 songs in 4 hours, it was quite overwhelming to be honest.
In the first stages of writing “The Sweetest Wave,” could you already sense that it needed the addition of strings?
We’ve always liked the idea of doing something very grand. When we did Hours, we had done a very stripped-down record there. It was quite raw, the way it was recorded. A lot of my guitar tracks are just the full take and then doubled straight-away after that. That was another thing. When you’ve done a record people could say, “It’s all really produced.” The record is as close to being live, other than us just going in and having a microphone each and playing. It was very, very light and very raw from take to take. It didn’t take that long to track as a result of it. I think I did all my guitar parts in about 5 days.
With this album, we wanted to do something bigger and grander sounding. With the idea of developing the storyline and the concept, we decided that obviously it would be cool to bring sort of a cinematic sort of element to it by using the orchestra. When we finally heard it, it was like, “Wow.” We didn’t want to use a conventional method. We didn’t want to do a ballad and have a ballad with strings. We wanted to put the strings on the heaviest sections of songs.
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| "I think I did all my guitar parts in about 5 days." |
You recently streamed the full album on your MySpace page. What kind of response have you gotten from fans in terms of the grander sound?
It’s all been really positive. It’s quite insane because today we were looking at it, and it had been up for like 3 days for people to listen to it. It had like 425,000 listeners in 3 days! That’s insane! Yeah, the feedback has been unbelievably positive. For the kind of band we’ve been and everything we’ve done previously, I suppose it’s a bit too much to ask for people who have liked us in the past to like this. But the response we’ve had has been amazing so far. Everybody is excited about the fact that we didn’t stay the same and we decided that we had to push ourselves a little bit more. You’ll get 1 or 2 people who say, “I prefer when you were screaming.”
But this album is what we wanted to do. It’s always nice when you read comments from people who appreciate it. So far, I think the songs people have like the most so far are “Raise The Sail,” “Open Water,” and “The Sweetest Wave.” People have kind of attached to them straightaway, which is really cool because they’re pretty much the really big, grand, cinematic songs. They’re the ones that we use the orchestra on. “Into Oblivion,” we released as a single for people to listen to for about a month. That has had a very positive response. I think that was the great thing about what we wanted to do with this record. We wanted the first song to do something, which people would know they’re not going to get the same record.
Can you see the next record having a similar cinematic sound?
The kind of people we are, none of us really are into one particular type of music. We don’t even like the same music as each other. That’s what makes us have good chemistry between us. We don’t agree on other people’s music, but we all agree on our music. We can all bring different influences into the band. I was inspired doing this record. I wouldn’t want to do a record that sounds exactly the same as this one. We can kind of do what we do with all our records, which is not to make the same record twice. We keep pushing ourselves and see where things are going to take us.
We all sort of sat down and were discussing the next record today, actually! The album is to be released on the 15th for you in the US, and we’re already talking about the next record. It’s been 10 months of work, this album has been - from when we started writing, to finishing recording, to the extent where we are now, where it’s about to come out. It’s been about 10 months. So we’re really excited about playing these songs live. We’re talking about maybe different ideas of what we’ll write in the future. We always like to progress and we always like to be a band that pushes themselves and doesn’t take things for granted.
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