I listened to the entirety of this several times while in record stores. The album repeatedly goes over my head… there’s one song near the end that’s a bit pretty and is somewhat catchy (before the gobbling/yelping overtakes the mix), but otherwise, while it’s not bad, it’s incredibly overrated.

If anything, The Arcade Fire remind me of a more sluggish Polyrock, who were one of many frenetic guitar pop bands from NYC in the early 80s, except not as proto-Stereolab-ish as Polyrock’s first two albums were.. so if you like Funeral, you might want to check out the first two Polyrock albums.

The best thing to come out of Funeral is more money to the great folks at Merge records. This probably means more funding of releases of great bands from New Zealand related to the Flying Nun family. :)