Fontaines D.C. have released their second album A Hero’s Death today – have a listen on New Music Friday below.
Like Gladiators to the lions, artists with a noteworthy debut album have always been thrown into the colosseum of world touring with scant regard for anything other than how much business they can generate. Are you not entertained?
How they react to this pressure is much less predictable.
For Fontaines D.C. – already poetic, introverted and considered – theirs was a tough road to travel. At a time when the music industry struggles to make any kind of a buck from your traditional, five-piece guitar band, upon the release of Dogrel in 2019 here was a commodity for the suits that’s becoming all too rare – a new group with a record people were talking about. Now get out there and sell it.
“We were all burning the candle at both ends,” Grian Chatten told Apple Music. “I think my subconscious was trying to tell me when I wrote that line that I was not really facing reality properly. Ever since I’ve read Oscar Wilde, I’ve always been fascinated by questioning the validity of living soberly or healthily.”
Some bands want to keep the candle burning, their second album in turn a reason to keep the party going, to get more excessive, to go on forever. Fontaines D.C. were on that road for a while, but A Hero’s Death is the sound of them getting sober. The front door has been opened, hangers-on asked to leave. If they so wish, some fans might follow them out.
It’s a strong 9am coffee of an album, reflecting, hungover on the night before.
