BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition September 2019

DANIEL TOPETE
MUSiC CONCERT PREVIEWS
FONTAINES D.C.
k CONTINUED FROM PG. 13
that resolutely pins the city’s heart to to
the arch of the band’s sleeve.
At nearly every corner, they debunk
the reductive description that they’re
a post-punk band. Task delegation and
discipline is something the band think
about often. Their ability to prevent
their flair for experimentation from careening
off a cliff is a calculated effort.
FONTAINES D.C.
Friday, Sept. 13
“It’s important for us that every element, even if
it’s a very simple element, is all necessary. The most
important thing is to take yourself out, and to serve
the song and not serve the musician,” he continues.
While much of their music has been described as
a clear-headed portrait of a specific moment in Dublin’s
cultural history, Fontaines D.C. consider their
method far less rigid. By relying on the mechanics of
poetry to examine themes of frustration and disillusionment,
gusto and joy, rather than crafting a love
letter to their city, they’re more invested in writing
an unedited state of the union signed off by those
at the bottom.
“We didn’t want to ignore any aspect of the place
we lived in, and just tried to see the honesty in the
place. A lot of the times those feelings weren’t necessarily
unpleasant, but we didn’t want to brush it
off. We wanted to understand them.”
To illustrate this point, O’Connell recites the following
line from Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue
Phoenix Concert Theatre
(Toronto)
Tix: $16, ticketfly.com
Friday, Sept. 20
Fox Cabaret (Vancouver)
Tix: $18, ticketweb.ca
Raincoat” from memory, and without
missing a beat: “And thanks, for
the trouble you took from her eyes / I
thought it was there for good so I never
tried.”
“Those lyrics just speak to the value
of ambiguity. The listener can place
whoever they want in the role of the
subject,” he says. “I think speaking of
lyrics too much can be damaging to the song. The
most important thing we have is our own interpretation
of things.”
In an era of cultural hyperspecificity, perhaps offering
listeners the agency to define the contents of
a song is more than a rejection of ego; it provides
an opportunity to dismantle the long-held assumptions
of who gets to be the protagonist in rock’s
most legendary stories. In an interview with The
Guardian, lead singer Grian Chatteren explained
that one reading of “Boys in the Better Land” could
be from the perspective of an ambiguous, multicultural
taxi driver asserting his Irishness.
“Most places more or less have the same broad,
political backbone. It has its flaws, and there’s good
things,” he finishes. “I suppose that’s part of the
reason why it resonates with people: because even
though they’re not from the same place that we got
all that inspiration from, there’s a mirror image in
all these different cities.” ,
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14 BEATROUTE SEPTEMBER 2019