All Those Friendly People

Album: Lily Of The Valley (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • Funeral Suits, an alt rock quartet from Dublin, Ireland, caught their big break when acclaimed producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur) agreed to helm their debut LP, Lily of the Valley. This synthpop-infused single finds the band recalling a wasted youth ("Hid away 'til I was eighteen, only saw colors on a TV screen") and facing a doomed romance with a girl who has nicotine lips and a heart of stone.
  • The popular music video, directed by Shaun Ryan, is part of a trilogy inspired by William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, that also includes "Health" and "Hands Down By Your Side." In this installment, an exuberant masked showman drags a woman across a beach before unleashing his pig-men sidekicks on her. The clip was shot over three days in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains and Malahide Beach. Of the video, Funeral Suits vocalist/guitarist Mik McKeogh tells Songfacts: "It documents an age-old battle between the oppressor and the oppressed. It's surreal… It's quite juxtaposed to the song, but I think they complemented each other really nicely."

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