Fontaines D.C.
A Hero's Death

Not even Bruce Springsteen in his redneck phase was more boring than Fontaines D.C. in their student council representative phase. The more the industry magazines try to convince me that these Dubliners are the main players in the post-punk renaissance, the more I'm convinced that this renaissance exists only in the minds of those who find it thrilling to listen to records from bands that learned to play bass by imitating Interpol, rather than someone with a hint—a bare minimum, really—of groove.

Fontaines D.C. would be one of those bands to mock mercilessly, deploying the worst of one's sarcasm, as I did in the review of their first album (a rare piece of rubbish). But I want to get to the bottom of the matter, because it's humanly impossible to find albums like this exciting. I'm not buying it, it’s not that I have different tastes, it’s you who are wrong and have lousy taste. Let it be clear that Interpol knew how to play the bass, and that straight minimalism was the result of an aesthetic and political, militant choice. It was the sound of New York in the void of ground zero.

Instead, these guys are from Dublin, a city of befuddled beer brewers. If you’re from Dublin, damn it, how can you hope to communicate anything to me if you put a one-note bass and a stupid guitar that follows it slavishly? And if the drums climb on top, sly and idiotic, and you sing over it with a nasal voice that makes rats screech? And you know what I care about your "angry," "dissatisfied," "punk" lyrics? The same as you care about making music that isn’t as derivative as my balls, which is nothing. What do you want to tell me? That you're missing out on girls, work, the PlayStation, drugs? Put down the instruments and do something concrete, I don't know, take a flight and go on Erasmus, escape: if at twenty years old you are here complaining about this music which is older than your grandfather’s grandfather when he was already retired, you’re just wasting time and opportunities, not to mention the ball-breaking you produce in those who listen to you.

This album is the death of youth, the death of spirit, it almost makes me agree with the screwed ones who occasionally write "trap kicks rock’s ass" to gather two views and an interview with a rapper high on codeine. Keep these damned bands, this dark cellar sound, these inhibited and contrived songs. You’re eighty years old, not in the registry office, but in your heart, and the sad thing is that you consider yourselves eternal "teenagers at heart." But hell no.