Tag: Culture reviews

Romance is not Dead

The new album by Fontaines DC is alive and kicking

More than five years worth of water has disappeared under the bridge since Dublin’s finest, Fontaines DC, released their debut album, Dogrel. There have been two more since then – A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia, but neither of them generated the same excitement as their first, with its originality and verve.

They arrived heralded as nouveau punk and although those comparisons are always inevitably flawed and misleading, there was something in that characterisation. That album was many things but, like the original punks, one thing it was not, was polite. There was an authenticity and a couldn’t-care-less attack to it. This is us, it seemed to declare, and we don’t care what you say about it. This was my review of it at the time:

My Childhood was small, but I’m gonna be Big

But now comes their fourth studio album, Romance, and it’s a game changer. Old heads with old hands now and they have produced something of rare beauty that triumphantly confirms what that first album promised: They’re gonna be Big. The start of the album generates fear of disappointment, with the title track, Romance. Moody, doomy synth washes with dark, dark lyrics: 

Into the darkness again,

In with the pigs in the pen

Don’t worry! It’s a deliberately misleading start. It’s not doom and gloom that await you in this album, it’s joy and beauty. This is not a band trying to curry favour with its potential new audience, playing it safe. It would have been so easy to start the album with Favourite for some uplifting poppy melody, but that is a trap they sidestep, preferring instead to make demands on their fan base. And they are demands that are worth responding to. After three listens, the subtle pleasures of vocals, lyrics and atmospheric layers lodge themselves in your brain, and you’ll wonder why you doubted them in the first place.

The album goes from strength to strength. The single, Starburst, is the perfect antidote to the slow gloom of Romance. First, strange mellotron is studded by liquid arpeggio piano notes that ooze a grave, poignant portent. Then the uptempo beat and word heavy, almost rapping rhythmic vocals – this will be the standout track on first listen. But that won’t last, as the subtle pleasures of all the other tracks begin to elbow you for attention.

The melodies are gorgeous, the lyrics subtle and clever, the vocals sweet, particularly the unexpected harmonies that punctuate many of the songs. It’s a repeat of the Black Keys scenario, back in 2011. After releasing three well respected hard electric blues rock albums, that clocked up mega critical approval but few sales, the Black Keys suddenly discovered how to write classic pop songs with killer hooks and choruses and came up with El Camino. Still quintessentially Black Keys, with their DNA pulsing through it, it was a compulsively fabulous commercial record. So it is with Fontaines and this album. It retains its Dublin accent, but uses it to tell better stories that will pull in a bigger audience. They look a little different as well. But then, don’t we all….

Fontaines now…

Fontaines then…

The two standout tracks for me at the moment have that unmistakable classic quality of great songs: they sound like they’ve been discovered, excavated in an archaeological dig rather than having been newly created. It’s as if they’ve always been here. Have a listen, first to the sublime “Bug”.

Then the closing song of the album, “Favourite”. In a pre-streaming age, this would have been the opener to pull the audience in, on vinyl or CD. Lovely shiny guitar riff and cleverly worked chorus, this is classic pop.

Do yourself a favour and follow these instructions.

  1. Play the two tracks linked here.
  2. Buy the record, or download it.
  3. Try and get a ticket to see them live.

You know it makes sense

The View from the Great North Wood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Running Time: 2hr 45m Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie

I went to this as a Tarantino virgin. Of course, I’ve seen untold clips from Pulp Fiction and Reservoir dogs, but for some reason, never a whole film, all the way through. It felt like I’d just missed the boat. Even at the beginning, when he was the hippest film maker in town, for some reason our paths did not cross. And latterly, exposed as a ghastly chauvinist and apologist for the likes of Harvey Weinstein, he held little appeal. And then there was the violence. Yes, I know, it was comic book and ironic, knowing and referential, but still it was enough to put me off shelling out to see his films at the cinema.

So I went to this as a sceptic. And came out as a convert. Apart from three minutes of ghastly, gratuitous violence at the end of the film, it was a magnificent, bravura piece of film making. The homage to late Sixties LA culture, with a fabulous soundtrack and wonderful sets and costumes, was delightful. Pitt and DiCaprio were a great double act, with their complex and nuanced “friendship” at the heart of the film. The criticism, on-line and in lots of the reviews, of Tarantino marginalising Margot Robbie by giving her hardly any lines in comparison to the two big beast leads, misses the point, I think. I’d normally be right there, criticising Tarantino’s attitudes to women, but the film is not really about Sharon Tate and therefore isn’t really about Margot Robbie. The handling of the Charles Manson story is subtly skewed so history is reworked and it’s a better film as a result.

There’s also a tantalising bit of evidence that he’s trying to behave himself in the light of #metoo. The Brad Pitt character gives a lift to the clearly underage, sexually aware, hippy girl and she propositions him. He takes the trouble to ascertain her age before turning her down when he finds out she is too young. It was so transparent you could see Tarantino having the conversation with his lawyer behind the screen. Didn’t fit the times nor the character, and there was just a sense that he was “playing” the issue while earning brownie points. Like Sir Geoffrey Boycott sponsoring a women’s refuge.

It’s not perfect, hence the four stars. The opening half is baggy and self-indulgent. You get the feeling that Tarantino was having a whale of a time, and no-one was going to tell him to leave that scene on the cutting room floor, but it could easily have been at least twenty minutes shorter. And there is that nasty blood rage at the end. But I’ll forgive him all of the faults for the scene where Pitt’s character goes to visit an old Hollywood ranch film set where the Westerns used to be made. Now in crumbling disrepair, it’s been effectively squatted by the psychotic hippies that fall in with Manson. Pitt goes to visit an old colleague, concerned for his welfare. He parks just inside the entrance and his buddy lives in a trailer at the far end of the lot. The darkness underlying the Summer of Love and its aftermath, seeps through the luminous sunny colours as Pitt walks the length of the ramshackle film ranch, with every step ratcheting up a sense of fear and foreboding in the audience. It’s a masterclass in creating tension.

Go and see it. And while you do that, I’ll stream all of his others. I’ve already waited too long.