Fontaines D.C. ‘Skinty Fia’ (Album review)

 

Skinty Fia is a celebration, both planned and unplanned. The third album from proud Dubliners Fontaines D.C. is at every turn an unashamed embrace of the band's Irishness, but it is also a wild-eyed affirmation that they are every bit as good as we always hoped they would be. 

 Opening track 'In ár gCroíthe go deo' is tense and fractious, swirling its way to a captivating cacophony which on most other records could amount to peaking too soon. But given that Skinty Fia's lead single was 'Jackie Down The Line', a thunderous contender for song of the year, there isn't much cause for concern.

 

Ironically the title track is the only faltering step on a record where the band regularly take giant strides sideways as well as forwards – following the complete curveball of a solo accordion on 'The Couple Across The Way' and one song away from the dizzying Soundgarden shoegaze of closing track 'Nabokov' its electronic drums stretch the Fontaines DC sound into an area that doesn't feel totally natural.

 

Much more rewarding are the Pixies influences scattered throughout the record, 'Bloomsday' wonderfully marrying them with the glacial harshness of Joy Division and 'I Love You' building a Kim Deal bassline into another dizzying climax. But, ultimately, it's impossible to overstate the impact of Grian Chatten's unmistakeable vocals, which lift the beguilingly simple 'How Cold Love Is' to another level and get uncharacteristically tender on 'The Couple Across TheWay'. By album number three Chatten's voice is firmly established as one of the best things about Fontaines D.C., and therefore of all of post punk in the 2020s.

 

If A Hero's Death was a dark, claustrophobic reaction to the explosive success of debut album Dogrel, on Skinty Fia the band hit their stride and carve a niche entirely their own.

Words - Joe Ponting 

Skinty Fia is out now via Partisan Records 

Fontaines D.C. official