It was a long time since a rock group had not reached a transversal consensus of public and critics like the Irish Fontaines DC The young band from Dublin (DC stands for Dublin city) led by singer Grian Chatten has come to maturity with his third album, entitled Skinty fia, an ancient Irish expression meaning “the damnation of the deer”. It is a melancholy album, imbued with reflections on Irish identity.
Although Fontaines DC have been living in London for a couple of years, they remain gods jackeen, derogatory term used by the British to identify the people of Dublin. And their restlessness is the engine of these songs, like the excellent one Jackie down the line (which musically is a tribute to the Smiths of Bigmouth strikes again) and the bewitching Roman holiday (which instead seems to come out of Urban hymns dei Verve). Also thanks to the lyrics of the singer Grian Chatten (an authority on the subject as Kae Tempest called him “a poet”) and a sound that fits into the groove of post-punk but is opening up more and more towards a songwriting dimension , as the introspective opening passage demonstrates In our Hearts forever, inspired by a woman’s legal battle to put an inscription in Irish, the mother’s native language, on her mother’s tombstone in the English cemetery at Exhall, despite opposition from the Anglican church. It is a piece with almost no guitars, with a suspended beginning before the watershed entry of the drums, in which Chatten’s voice is accompanied by an almost liturgical choir.
The best piece of the record perhaps is I love you: at first it looks like a slightly dark love letter (complete with Cure guitars of the period Disintegration), then becomes a political invective that brings up the housing crisis, the emigration of young Irish people and the conservatism of the main parties on the island such as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
At one point Chatten evokes a case of crime that has shaken his country in recent years: “But this island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck in their jaws” their jaws. It refers to the discovery of the common tomb of Tuam, County Galway, near an old house for single mothers run by nuns in the first half of the twentieth century. According to the reconstructions, hundreds of children would have died in that structure, many of whom remained without burial.
Chatten’s writing always travels on multiple levels: it is profound, but without ever sacrificing accessibility. I love you is a beautiful song, born in the wake of a noble tradition of songs about Ireland (Bad e Please of U2, for example). And opens the way to the conclusive Nabokovin which Chatten sings like a Gen Z Ian Brown over a carpet of post-rock guitars.
Fontaines DC had already glimpsed great things on their first two albums, Dogrel e A hero’s deathbut with Skinty fia they consecrated themselves. These tunes are less angry, they are not a punch in the face like Sha sha sha e Too real, but they creep under the skin and leave a deeper groove. Musically the band tends towards quotation, sometimes too much, but the personality and the lyrics elevate the overall quality of the group. And they could guarantee them a longevity that was not taken for granted at the start of their careers.