AS concept albums go, Eulogy is among the less whimsical of its kind. With no wave poet Lydia Lunch, a minister with the multi-faith Universal Life Church, fronting the bulk of the 10 tracks the mood is not so much sombre as reflective.
Family in Mourning describe themselves as a funeral collective, and number among them an undertaker, a funeral director and a psychic adviser, and they have authored a debut LP that speaks tenderly to and about an experience common to every human being who ever lived while making such a sublime noise you wonder why nobody has ever attempted such an undertaking (sorry) before.
Besides such hypnotic songs as Dust and Shadows and Last Time We Met, a two-chord threnody garlanded by circling sax and ambient tones, Eulogy finds space for poetry of sound, climaxing in the intro to I Fell from Grace, wherein a disembodied choir emerges from noise and insistent organ, the cumulative effect one of rhapsody.
“Death is just a shadow,” Lunch repeats over and over as this record arrives at its final resting place. If you find yourself in need of light, there could be no better place to start than this peculiarly therapeutic offering.
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