All aboard the Fontaines D.C. machine for another go around on their new sound. Making waves with this noise is all well and good, and the band has backed up the road to Romance with their best works to date. Make no mistake, Starburster and Favourite are better than anything their discography has thrown up so far – and as it stands, Fontaines D.C. is on course for one of the best albums of the year. The decade? Who knows. The night is young, the homemade martini has taken hold and bold moves must be made. Here’s the Thing makes its own brash decisions, a guitar-heavy punch which lacks the vibrancy and spirit of the other two tracks. Floaty indie-rock work which feels more like a stopgap than a final single before the release of their fourth album.
That is not to say Here’s the Thing is not filled with the usual heart and spirit expected of Grian Chatten and the gang. It is. A grunge-like bolt of pain surges through this and the heavy panting is heard within. Numb the pain and accept it as the right course of action. Here’s the Thing would have us apply the coconut balm on the scorched legs but it feels like a leap too far when lined up with the other two tracks from this upcoming album. An album which will no doubt echo through Branham Park despite nobody there having access to a stable enough internet connection to listen to it. Still with rosé wine poured into plastic bottles it will not matter. Here’s the Thing will be washed up in the wave of boozy emotions if played at the right time – but on a sober mind this one will not quite click.
Something is missing. Chatten has not lost his nerve as a lyrical force – if anything this is one of the better scribbles of his career, but the instrumental tone has struck an interesting, if ineffective, nerve. Hopes of a sentiment without a commitment to one may be the running sore here. A song which has rid itself of what made the previous two tracks so intoxicating, and so satisfying. An admission of being wrong and a chance to change your mind is all which remains here. It is tricky to feel much more for the instrumental tone taken by this one than a shrug of the shoulders. Bar the heavy breathing and the consistency of Chatten as a vocalist there is a sense of Fontaines D.C. losing their way, panting down the neck of their audience, grabbing their attention, and freezing under the pressure.
But this pressure is self-made. A chance for the band to express their regret or confidence in causing trouble. Instead of this, Here’s the Thing becomes a song of promised but absent action. Discover what makes you happy and cling to it for dear life. This may be the motion guiding the latest track from Chatten and the gang but it does little to inspire the joys of emotional cravings. Instead, it feels humdrum, an off-kilter piece of work which would be sidled up with the generic rock ramblings of the Radio X crowd. Always good to have that group in your pocket in between the Oasis re-runs and Chris Moyles pub quiz hour. With the heart of Favourite providing a neat contrast to this, it is easier to prefer and proclaim the first Romance single as the better of the two, even without the context of its full release.
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