Song 84: The Funeral

I think of this song by Band of Horses as one of the last I loved unself-consciously. Hard to know exactly what that means or why that is. There was a period it seemed so easy for bands like this. Stay skinny, grow a patchy beard, big guitar, quiet guitar, Neil Youngish vocal, play early evening in mid-size festivals, sell a few hundred thousands, soundtrack an emotional scene on a glossy but thoughtful TV drama ... keep the ball rolling.

And I and lots of others lapped it up. Then it seemed to get really hard for all of them. I don't know if it was them or us, but Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Iron and Wine, Midlake, The National, The Decemberists, The Shins, they stopped hitting the spot quite so much. They changed, music changed.

But I loved this song, and, when I choose to, I still love it. I have various fondnesses for it.

Going to see Band of Horses at Brixton Academy in courtship's early days - a slightly peculiar, but great gig.

Ben Bridwell (the singer) began the show with a possibly ill-advised close harmony with another band member, and a guy shouted, loud as anything, from the audience "get the fuck on with it" as if he was entirely intent on ruining the night for everyone and I wouldn't have held it against Mr Bridwell if we'd packed up and gone home at that point or if he'd played a surly, desultory gig.

But it was a great gig after that, and they ran through those happy/sad Band of Horses numbers which are almost famous like 'No One's Gonna Love You', 'Is There a Ghost', Weed Party', 'Laredo' etc, and then in the encore came their biggest, most well known number 'The Funeral' and yet, as if to cement London's reputation as a dreadful city of dreadful gig goers (which I have not found generally to be the case) two girls behind us started engaging loudly in an utterly banal loud heart to heart, and, to my surprise, I managed neither to dig myself into an angry hole nor snap wildly, but turned round and found the words "look, you can have this conversation later, you'll regret not listening to the encore" which seemed to do the trick.

This was about five months after I'd been listening to the song a great deal as a kind of pep talk soundtrack for the literal-minded, as I was engaged with organising my father's funeral.

The song is, I think, about a romance gone sour rather than an actual funeral but nevertheless I found the lyric "At every occasion, I'll be ready for the funeral, Every occasion, once more, it's called the funeral, Every occasion, know I'm ready for the funeral" was pointing me in the right direction to getting all the arrangements in place.

There were a few issues to iron out, but we got there - it was to be a Catholic requiem mass. I contacted the priest, and probably unwisely took it upon myself to deliver the homily. This priest was a funny one, as we'll get to. It was decided we wanted hymns, and he thought this quite a bad idea and tried to persuade against it, and then when it came to the ceremony, didn't introduce the hymns, so to be honest they weren't sung all that heartily and he probably felt he was proved right.

It was one of those unusually sunny London October days that have become the norm this decade but back in 2010 were still a surprise. I remember getting off my tube train and seeing a man walking along the platform and thinking "I bet I'm related to him" and he was indeed a cousin on my father's.

The day went well and was all rather fun - the contacts book had been gone through and it was quite a treat seeing this parade of London Irishers popping along for one more booze-up.

I had calmed down after the service, where quite the most hilarious (in retrospect, not at the flippin time) thing happened. As I went up to deliver my carefully crafted words, the priest said "Now Paddy's youngest son David will say a few words. Now I think you'll agree with me that David bears a striking resemblance to the footballer Wayne Rooney" ...

Well, I do ... certainly did then ... but there's a time and a place. I later learned members of my family needed to be restrained from lamping him ... anyway, he attempted to make another telling intervention when I briefly faltered near the end of the speech (probably still reeling from the blow he'd dealt me) and tried to "guide" me away from the pulpit. Jesus, this guy. I also knew at that point I'd be ending with a recitation of 'The Parting Glass' which I'd thought quite a genius touch but was informed later was pretty bog-standard sappy cack for an Irishman's funeral.

Anyway, there we go. Throughout this time, I had Band of Horses playing in my head. I'm not sure if they helped or not, but I continue to think fondly of them.