Funeral Homes – Double Vision | Video Premiere

As an artist, you can’t always choose what people’s first impression of you will be. This is the logic behind singles and music videos: to try and craft an intentional string of encounters that build off each other, transforming someone from a prospective listener into a fully-fledged fan. In the age of streaming, TikTok, and instant access, this experience is harder for artists to have any control over. Even in the ever-splintered media landscape of 2023, a good music video has the power to give viewers an understanding of what makes a band unique. Funeral Homes know this and have put their best foot forward with their new video for “Double Vision.”

Funeral Homes is a Jacksonville-based Shoegaze band that started as the solo project of Sofia Poppert. After a string of singles and contributions to compilations, Funeral Homes released their first long-form articulation in 2019 with Lavender House, a seven-song collection that leaned more towards the heavy end of emo than overt shoegaze. Fast forward a few years, and 2022’s Blue Heaven is a fully-fledged LP with some of the most beautiful, catchy, and haunting shoegaze songs I’ve heard in years. 

The album’s lead single, “Double Vision,” is the rare case where a shoegaze song is able to rise out of its own genre trappings into something completely unique. Even within Blue Heaven, “Double Vision” comes after the lovelorn midtempo trod of “Before You Leave,” a sad song about heavy topics like separation and abandonment. Then, one song later, here comes this bounding, thumpy track that deploys a vicious amount of whammy bar and a riff that makes you want to catapult into nearby concertgoers. “Double Vision” melds shoegaze and noise pop with just a little bit of pop-punk pep, charging forward for an unrelenting two minutes before dumping you back into reality.

The video for “Double Vision” is a dizzying spin around the band’s practice space as a fisheye lens rotates through every member rocking out (and getting different fits off) until the song’s final moments. Since the group previously consisted only of Poppert, this video acts both as an unveiling of the full lineup and as a way to package up one of the band’s best songs into an entry point for prospective listeners. 

For those that journey into the rest of the album, you’ll be treated to hypnotic dream states, twilight musings, and hypnagogic revelations. The 44 minutes Funeral Homes have laid out on Blue Heaven ring out with sticky riffs, dense fuzz, and far-off vocals disguised in an alluring shroud of haze. The whole thing merges into this dreamy blue wall of noise that positions Funeral Homes as part of a promising wave of Florida-gaze bands like Rosewilder and Gravess. With any luck, the video for “Double Vision” will lead hordes of new fans into Funeral Homes’ gorgeous, humid, and heavy corner of the world.