April 22, 2022
Partisan Records
2xLP (Ltd. Edition Opaque Red Vinyl)
2xLP (Deluxe)
Right in the dead center of a venn diagram of The Cure and The Pogues lies Fontaines D.C.. Their two previous albums Dogrel and A Hero’s Death perfectly captured the energy and gloom of their home city of Dublin, with nervy post-punk songs that sound as cutting as anything coming out of Manchester in the 80s while preserving their unmistakable Irishness through singer Grian Chatten’s thick Dublin accent and the hyper-specific Irish references found throughout their discography. Skinty Fia finds the band having moved to London and navigating the accompanying identity crisis of moving to England as an Irish person. But musically the band sounds quite content to be ridding themselves of any identity. While this is most easily categorized as a post-punk album there are accordion-driven ballads, industrial-electronic rhythms and a focus on melody that moves the band away from their post-punk contemporaries and shows them to be more clearly operating in their own lane.