the sound of a band with no worry

Fontaines D.C. have returned this week with long-awaited new music. ‘Starburster’, an infectious new single, seems set to propel the band into the stratosphere.

In a promo photograph issued the day earlier than the track’s announcement, the band debuted their new look, which you’d be forgiven for considering was a ‘Billie Joe Armstrong cosplaying each Prodigy member directly’ competitors. This look interprets completely into the music, nevertheless. Chatten delivers a vocal efficiency in continuity with the place Skinty Fia’s nearer, ‘Nabokov’, left off. This time, nevertheless, he’s left the extended whines at residence, and kicked the door down combating with a snarl. Though the observe tails off right into a gentler finish, there is no such thing as a denying that ‘Starburster’ has set the tone for a extra aggravated sound. The palette is unrestrained – Tom (drums) lays down drums that have been destined for a hip-hop pattern, while Carlos (guitar) delivers these all-too-familiar twangs we’re so used to listening to minimize by a Fontaines observe. Impressed by a panic assault frontman Chatten had at St. Pancras, he comes up for air in between verses with an audible gasp, which is becoming contemplating the vocal supply leaves no time for leisure respiration. There’s a actual sense of ferocity within the supply of the instrumentation, the kind of hazard in step with the expertise at considered one of their acclaimed reside reveals. Even the piano feels indignant.

There may be an apparent sonic development there, too. Lengthy-time followers is not going to be stunned on the inventive course – the band have been teasing a extra left area (see the place that is going) strategy for some time now, meddling with darker, nu-metal tones on tracks like Skinty Fia. The affect is evident – of their two yr break, Chatten laid down vocals over Irish hip-hop trio Kneecaps’ tune, ‘Higher Method To Stay’, whereas additionally teaming up with Leftfield (there it’s!) for ‘Full Method Spherical’. Each of those have clearly made an affect. This new sound has arguably all the time been the essence of the band’s sonic enchantment, revealing itself extra because the years go by. Countless half-band DJ units across the UK over the previous 2 years must depend for one thing, eh?

Now to the music video. As traditional, they’ve thrown conference out of the window sure on the ankle with a bag of rocks. Taking a extra narrative strategy, with intermittent breaks within the track to permit Chatten’s character some autonomy, it has a really cinematic edge. While I do assume that the interruptions detract from the listening expertise, this isn’t an mp3 file, it’s a music video. So so long as this didn’t translate to the streaming variations, it’s high-quality. And it didn’t. So it’s high-quality!

Simply days earlier than launch, it was introduced, quite discreetly, that the band had signed to XL Recordings, residence to Radiohead and Thom Yorke’s numerous different initiatives. You possibly can undoubtedly inform. The repeated string loop because the track opens feels contemporary out of In Rainbows. However that isn’t the one new side – the document was produced by Arctic Monkeys veteran James Ford. Though there isn’t a noticeable Monkeys affect over this specific observe, the snippet shared to the band’s social media to tease their new studio album is eerily harking back to ‘Sculptures Of Something Goes’, which might make sense contemplating the band spent the again finish of 2023 touring America with Turner & Co.

Talking of the approaching studio album, Romance, the band’s fourth LP, hits the cabinets on August twenty third, the identical weekend they plan to take Studying and Leeds by storm for the second time in 3 years. A pre-order hyperlink confirmed the hopes of many when it revealed that the UK & Eire tour announcement was pending. It is going to be fascinating to see how the band reinvent themselves on the stage – they’ve dropped the formality of earlier seems and have evidently been drawn in by the recent pink of Carlos’ hair during the last yr. There may be completely no expectation, no means of understanding what the band will do after they lastly hit the stage once more this summer season for a string of European pageant reveals.

It doesn’t matter what, if ‘Starburster’ is something to go by, Romance guarantees to be charming. Fontaines are scorching on the heels of the indie greats of our time, with no signal of slowing down simply but.