Photo by Grayce Leonard
Fontaines D.C. came out swinging with their debut album, Dogrel, just last year; a well received and tightly focused post-punk influenced rabble rouser propelled forward by a double shot of high proof Irish attitude. Not wasting any time, the band is set to release their sophomore follow-up this coming July, recently dropping the title track and its slickly-produced video on the challenges of remaining authentic in the face of overwhelming success.
“A Hero’s Death” doesn’t stray too far from the band’s established formula. Punchy rhythm and angular guitar are presented as a polished, but still sensibly gritty substrate for a laundry list of shouted blue collar platitudes. Working class slogans on how to be a proper bloke delivered with the kind of brusque efficiency born from long years on the front lines of industry and late nights in the pubs, a cultural affinity at once unique to Fontaines D.C.’s native Dublin but universal enough to strike a chord with middle class young men as far away as the expansive and mundane middle of the United States.
It’s clear that being perceived as authentic is critically important to Fontaines D.C., especially so after the litany of praises heaped upon their debut, a chorus line of high marks and perfect scores that afforded them easy access to the front of the line. Too often a band’s meteoric rise so soon after breaking onto the scene results in a flat follow up, victims of their own success and a publicity machine rabidly eager to exploit the next big thing. By doubling down on the angst and cranking the realness to 11, Fontaines D.C. are actively avoiding the sellout tag so vehemently that they are literally presenting a list of reasons why they’re still hard. The band would rather fall on their own sword and die a hero’s death than be perceived as anything less than credibly punk, martyrs for a generation of those with so much and so little to be angry about.
Writer/director Hugh Mulhern brings “A Hero’s Death” to visual life with a star-studded and highly polished video casting Game Of Thrones alum Aidan Gillen as a disillusioned TV host and prolific Irish entertainer Bryan Quinn as his puppeteer sidekick. Unfolding in an unending Groundhog Day-like series of darkly comic vignettes, Gillen’s character embodies the antithesis of everything Fontaines D.C. insist they stand for. Beholden to the approval of a faceless audience and consistently undermined by his closest allies, Gillen has betrayed the core of his own values to secure personal success and notoriety. He may be the man behind the desk but he’s playing second fiddle to a literal puppet, and the backstage apathy of his peers and celebrity guests reduces him to a shade of a man too weak to stand up for himself and his fading family. The most telling thing about this tragic figure of auto-self-loathing is that he recognizes his deficiencies but is so far gone that he’s unable, or unwilling, to break the shame spiral and returns night after night to publicly gorge himself at the trough of celebrity.
There is a marked difference between living up to your own personal expectations and meeting those of your audience, and if the band strays too far from punk into palatability they’ll lose the artistic integrity they so earnestly desire to maintain. Fontaines D.C. have big shoes to fill, their own, when A Hero’s Death releases July 31st.
Follow Fontaines D.C. on Instagram. Preview, presave, and preorder ‘A Hero’s Death’ here.
