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This summer I curled up around a Guinness at a crowded bar in Galway. I had just made my way down from a friend's wedding in Donegal. I sat chatting and sipping with my girlfriend as a Fontaines D.C. song came on over the speaker. We sat and listened together. Taking the scene, setting, and sounds in. It felt like a romanticized version of what I had hoped for Ireland to be, of what I think a lot of Americans romanticize Ireland to be. Irish music playing loud, Guinness being sipped, wooden bars and paint chipped walls. I looked around to see the bartender singing along to herself.Ā
It seems almost impossible not to contextualize Fontaines D.C. as an Irish band. I understand that art should be judged on its own, or whatever. But theyāre an Irish band and that means something.
It makes me think about James Joyceās āDublinersā, about Patrick Radden Keefeās āSay Nothingā, about the solidarity Ireland shares with Palestine, about the lyrics to āIn The Modern Worldā in which Grian sings, āSeems so hard just to beā with noticeable anguish in his voice. A line that could sum up a lot of Irish history. A country simply trying to be.
Irish artists have always found a way to speak directly to the human experience in a way that feels tender, tangible, and current. And Fontaines D.C. are no exception to this, especially on āRomanceā, an album, filled with hope, angst, nostalgia, disillusion, love, and a modern, justified, sense of anger. But maybe Iām romanticizing things.Ā Ā Ā
England Get Out of Ireland & Free Palestine
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i looovveeee this perspective on the band/album! I didnāt realize they were Irish and honestly it gives so much depth to the art
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The first single from Winter Boyfriend from the upcoming album set a, frankly, very different note. 'anx/bodies' is an outlier for us, musically and lyrically, but when putting the final touches to the album it was one of the songs that people seemed instinctively to engage with if they weren't broadly invested in our main thing, essentially indie/indie-punk made by a would-be emo band. At the very least it provoked a reaction.
It's a song inspired by a very specific series of events but is not specifically autobiographical. Outside of the world of this song i am much less forward about sex. I enjoy being 'too much' with friends but i really don't want it going anywhere my family might hear it. Repression is fun! I often wonder if that's similar to what actors feel when doing nudity or whatever. It's a case of, "I don't want to know you've seen me experience that?" Anyway, honesty can help in art, but also maybe so too does a little internal repression.
It was written about a memory of going to a university disco, arriving at the club where everyone was looking hot and cool, and i suddenly becoming very aware of my inability to be calm. It is essentially about over-stimulation and amorousness and the confusion of that smashing like a wrecking ball through any semblance of chill i might have had.
The verse bass riff is really old, easily over 10 years old. I wrote it for a different project, a Death From Above 1979 rip-off thing, and my pal Martin played bass, while i sang and drummed. The song was unremarkable but the riff was cool. There was no way i wasn't keeping it. Also, it explains why it's the only song that uses a fuzz bass tone. Yet.
I have no idea when i came up with the guitar riff but it's one of my favourite parts i've written. It's rythmic and a little bit dissonant, but i think the G# implies an E Major chord, making it A minor natural (sorry music theory experts, probably butchering this).
I was also unsure if i could allow myself to write the chorus which used power chords. It always feels too basic. But it worked in the context of the song. I finished it years ago aside from a few lyrical tweaks and the introduction sound (chord played, tremolo arm depressed as it fades out, recorded and reversed). Also when mixing the song my references were very different and included a lot of 00s and 10s music, including bands that have been grandfathered into the whole 'indie-sleaze' thing, and it made me realise the second verse needed, nay demanded!, a cowbell and some percussion (the other percussion is drumming on glass bottles fyi).
I feel like 'anx/bodies', and the song that follows it, 'on our way home', are two sides of the same coin. One uptight, repressed yet explosive, and the other unrelenting, desperate and flailing. You could almost imagine the latter being later in the same night, getting existential when worse-for-wear. More on that one later.
Jun 19, 2024
this was genuinely life changing for me. i cant express my love with words bc its almost religious at this point. the lads brought their absolute fucking a-game for this.
some fire lines:
development wants, development gets
its official
development wants this neighbourhood gone
so the city just wants the same
when the bit pulls tight, the grip is sewn into the reins
can't breathe it out, you just breathe it back again
the sun's a strange light
nothing grows right anymore
scars on every stalk
whose mouth should i use to talk?
laid out immobile
hoping for that call
it's in my mouth, under my skin
sodium pentathol
Feb 9, 2024
šµ
A banger. Been thinking about how he makes like anti americana (europana?). Sure it's an idea expressed better elsewhere. Instead of a Brit singing about Texas and whisky, he is an American singing about the Costa brava and drinking Buckfast by the Clyde. It even mirrors in the music, incorporating stuff like Irish folk influences
Jan 31, 2024
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School made us think reading is a holy act. It is not. Its just something to do. Like watching a movie or sports. You arenāt going to be tested by anyone. Read high. Read drunk. Read 2 pages. Read half awake. Remember nothing or just some of it. It really doesnāt matter
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Just do it who cares she probably knows better
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