Last year at a dive bar in lower Manhattan I watched a group of college girls drinking in the corner booth absolutely lose it when the DJ put on a Fontaines D.C. song. I forget which one. They stood up on the bench and leaned on each other, screaming the words and screaming nothing in particular. I kind of laughed it off because of course at one point that was me for every band I ever loved. But the thing about this moment was that it really showed the power to be harnessed by FDC, and now that this record is out, it will be tested in uncertain times.
A Hero’s Death, out today on Partisan Records, is (hear me out) a silent grey day hanging above a cold slate expanse of ocean off Irish countryside. The air is quiet to leave room for these ideas to fall down on you – the atmosphere isn’t shining a relentless hot sun at you because this carefully articulated wall of sound will make your skin glow hotly from within. “Appreciate the grey,” as they say. Tom Coll’s drumming is almost anxious at times in the use of his cymbals but it’s so concretely sure of where it’s going. Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connel’s guitars relish in that silence and calm where appropriate, but then crash and thunder with intent. The lyrics would look just right sitting bound on a shelf next to Yeats or Heaney.
Apologies for the egregiousness of these words but I don’t know how to tell you how good this record is. I guess I could just tell you it’s really fucking good.
“Living In America” has got this super sinister quality to it that hits hard especially right now, with Grian Chatten’s voice rumbling so low and round. Every hair on me stands on end. On “You Said,” the way the guitars create these strands of sound so gracefully makes you want to follow those lines anywhere they’ll take you. On “Sunny,” they’ll tell you a sad, swung story about a dad and his kid that bends between major and minor, between the corner of a mouth turned up slightly and a head hung low. The production is worlds beyond that of Dogrel – there is so much more sound.
With live music indefinitely out of the question, I am so curious to see if and how this band’s fanbase will shift, and how this record will exist in this world. A Fontaines D.C. show is typically packed with older punk dudes excited by this old sound made totally new again, with some of those younger girls packed up against the rail in the pit. A Hero’s Death, in an alternate universe, would have seen the band filling venues to capacity and playing the bigger stages at fests. But that’s not how it’s going to go, not for a while. I have faith that it will still be huge, just differently huge. Huge like an uninterrupted quietly dark afternoon sky threatening to pour down on ya? Huge like how you feel when you realize that, “we’re all in the running for a hero’s death.”
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