How NOT to write about music – 77. Fontaines DC

I feel like I am stepping into a time warp.

It ain’t that it don’t feel real. (It do.) It ain’t that the guitars don’t blister and scour and bleed annoyance and aggravation everywhere they turn. (They do.) It ain’t that this Dublin group ain’t intelligent and sassy: Sleaford Mods smart. (They is.) It’s ain’t that their songs boast a heavy narrative rarely seen outside grime and hip-hop, and that their music boasts a heavy swagger and cleansing grace rarely heard outside the music of Sonic Youth and another group who aren’t Sonic Youth. (They do.) It certainly ain’t that these lads don’t take a heavy pride in their heritage coupled with equal disgust and distrust. It ain’t that (intriguingly) this group have the potential to turn into something horrendous by the time they come to release their third album (let those radio programmers and Spotify drones get their hands on this beauty).

It ain’t any of that.

It’s just that every time I hear their blistering, scouring, smart, sassy, literate-as-your-fucking-mum, cleansing, invigorating, swaggering, challenging, some velvet sidewalkin’, agitated, aggressive, atonal, tightly wound, raging snarl of a beat and a bass drum I want to fucking EXPLODE, burst into paroxysms of no-longer pent-up frustration and bounce in the faces of the grey and mundane walking by, carol it from the balustrades and barricades, throw away cynicism and preconceptions, dance like Jonathan Richman, mow down any lingering opposition and smash through the remains. I’m reminded of the seething Australian underbelly.

Some fucking time warp. I’m guessing your school days are long over.

As someone way more literate than me once spat, “Repetition in the music/And we’re never going to lose it”.

This performance is riveting, once you’ve finished listening to ‘Too Real’ for the 10th time.