Fontaines D.C. are already back. The tour that followed “Dogrel”, the band’s worldwide-acclaimed debut, seems to have been fruitful from a creative point of view and the new album was written precisely during its breaks, when the band sought refreshment from the noise of concerts and the clamor of the press, which already labeled the band the “next big thing of rock”, as well as band that matters, capable of saving rock n ‘roll from the marginal position it had gradually assumed in recent years. 

But the real news is not so much that the Fontaines D.C. are back, but it’s the way they did it. The second episode of the saga turns out to be very different from the first. More thoughtful and thoughtful … if we want, more mature. 

No photocopy effect, therefore. The boys of Fontaines have a deep look, you just have to look them in the eye. In short, they believe. None of them, starting from the singer, have musically relevant qualities, yet together their formula has that something … It was once said that it was the characteristic that made a band magical. And perhaps one of the reasons for the fascination about Fontaines DC is that they make us think not so much of the good old years of rock, but of the things we liked most of those years. A mixture of poetry, youth and electricity, which seemed to fill the music with depth and truth. A mix that other bands try in vain to recreate (an example? The Algiers), but which often lacks something … perhaps that quid of epic that, declined in a modest way, makes Fontaines DC unique. 

The three singles released before the release of “A Hero’s death” seemed elusive, unable to show what kind of record the Dublin boys had in store for us. If A Hero’s death, the first extract from the album, looked like a “Dogrel”’s outtake , I Don’t Belong and Televised mind showed a less rough sound.

Now, listening to the whole new album confirms how the Fontaines D.C. used the recording studio to look inside themselves, to get away from expectations and pressures to clarify that “Dogrel” wasn’t enough to represent the soul of their musical experience. 

There was more and it had to be recorded in order to be able to raise on the table and, in perspective, to show themselves ready even for the challenge of the “difficult third album“. 

An album towards which we all look now, almost certain now that we have not been wrong in trusting the right band, after years in which, to feel properly represented, we had to turn our ears away from rock.

And so I Don’t belong is hypnotic and reiterated like certain things of “Dogrel”, but without the same fury, showing rather a calm sadness, Love is the main thing entrusts its truths to grooves and reverberated guitars, which recall the dying stars of Joy Division, Televised Mind stratifies guitars over guitars on a loud drumming, while Grian Chatten rattles off his own melodic spoken melodic style that has already become a trademark, A lucid Dream has a melodic bass prase upon phaser guitars and together with the first single A Hero’s death is the episode that most recalls the particular punk roar of “Dogrel”. The central oasis made up of the combination You said and Oh such spring follows; two songs in which the melodic turn in the band’s music is truly consummated with Grian who sings, sd he never did in the debut album, delicate melodies that in You said do not give up on reiteration phrases and in Oh such a spring spread out like some noise-ridden Jesus and Mary Chains. The band in both cases proves to be skilled in changing the register and, although especially in You said it supports the song in a  electrically substantial way, it knows how to dose its touch very well. The rhythm rises again with A Hero’s death and the grated guitars of Living in America, resting on the descending scales of Grian’s voice that comes down to the limits of his intonation, to give rise to a circular and hypnotic dynamic, moved by electric shocks of guitars. Was not born serves as a noisy interlude for the final couple of songs, Sunny and No, which close on slow pace, vocal harmonies, Irish reminiscences, almost twang guitars, arpeggios as fragile as glass and nostalgia for a tomorrow that we would like these young musicians assured us all.