Inside the hype

“The most overrated band of all time”. That's what a comment on the Facebook post announcing OndaRock's latest album of the month, “Skinty Fia”, by the Irish outfit Fontaines D.C., had to say. It struck me. The target of this criticism is a band that, with its third album, has only just managed to reach number one (in Ireland and Britain), that previously missed out on both the Grammy and the Mercury Prize, and whose most successful record to date has fewer streams than the latest LPs from Liberato (sung in Neapolitan dialect) and Harry Styles (released just a few days ago). For a project with these numbers to top a hypothetical list of the most overrated artists of all time looks like – irony intended – a considerable overestimation in itself!

Afterwards, I found myself coming back to that comment. But “overrated” by whom? It's not an expression that can be used without reference to some evaluating community. And which one would that be here? There aren't many plausible candidates: after all, for most music fans, this Irish band is just a name that pops up for a week at the top of the UK charts before sinking back into the depths of the top 100. Unless, that is, one is immersed in the “information bubble” made up of outlets, listeners and social media accounts closely following the indie/alternative world — the only scene in which Fontaines D.C. actually enjoy, alongside the whole post-post-punk movement, an unrivalled level of exposure.

The question now becomes more specific: “Is it true that the indie/alternative scene overrates Fontaines D.C.?”. Before tackling it, it's worth addressing a related issue: why does this audience love them so much? To find out, I tried to draw on the impressions of their fans: the many followers on our webzine's Facebook page, but also the authors of positive reviews found online, as well as comments on platforms like RateYourMusic. Searching for common traits and threads produced a clearer picture of why (talent aside – since the world is full of hugely talented artists) there's so much frenzy in the indie world around this name and the scene it leads.

Fontaines D.C. are wildly popular among those who identify musically with the indie/alternative world because they embody, to the highest degree, the core values of that community. I'll get to what those values are and how Fontaines D.C. express them in just a moment. But first, the conclusion. Overrated? Definitely not. If anything, we should be talking about underrated, given that a band with similar traits isn't otherwise idolized by today's alternative audience. Sure, listeners less tightly bound to that world will easily find their music unappealing. It's implausible, then, that this is a band that, as some would have it, will “save rock and roll”. Few, however, actually make that claim. A curious point that clearly emerges from this comparison, in fact, is the frequent perception – even among their biggest fans – that Fontaines D.C. don't represent, sonically speaking, anything particularly new or revolutionary. But let's take this step by step.

An alternative primer for the post-Brexit era

The "indie" aesthetic took shape over the course of the Eighties, before spreading widely in the Nineties with the mainstream explosion of the alternative movement. Even once the commercial boom faded in the early 2000s, the huge accessibility that the internet brought to music listening and information allowed a vast audience of fans to draw in new converts and keep evolving. Like every identity-based outlook, the indie/alternative perspective rests on a few key pillars: alongside the well-known cult of Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.), there's the importance placed on expression over technical skill, the artist's spontaneity, the rejection of upbeat clichés and outside pressures, the celebration of weakness and imperfection, and a broader unease with society — particularly with its dominant economic and political mechanisms. Found here and there across much of the music beloved in independent circles in recent years, these elements are especially visible in the output of that post-post-punk scene of which Fontaines D.C. are today the most acclaimed representatives.

Asked "What do you like about Fontaines D.C.'s music?", OndaRock's followers answer in a variety of ways, though a few recurring themes stand out. One especially common thread invokes a trio of nouns: sincerity, honesty, spontaneity. In the songs on "Skinty Fia" and the band's earlier albums, listeners perceive a complete transparency on the artist's part, a baring of his own thoughts and feelings. This isn't just an impression held by our site's readers: on Pitchfork, Stuart Berman notes right from the opening caption that "Skinty Fia" is an "open-hearted" record, describing it as "a perfect balance of toughness and tenderness." The sense of visceral intensity tied to that mix is amplified by the rawness of the guitar sound, and several commenters trace their appreciation back to the "urgency" the songs convey and the feeling that the band experiences musical communication as an absolute necessity (a few followers even reach for one of the phrases most in vogue among indie critics in the early 2000s: "expressive urgency").

That effect is amplified by singer Grian Chatten's distinctive vocal style, described by the specialist press as Sprechgesang and noted by the fans we consulted above all for its baritone register and its closeness to the models set by Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith. This hybrid of spoken delivery and singing has an unmistakably monotone quality (which pairs well with the dark atmospheres of several tracks), but it also lends itself to unexpected turns: as Sophie Williams writes for Nme, the approach to melody is "dark and methodical", but "on previous outings, Chatten would spit his words out breathlessly, as if his thoughts were arriving urgent and fast. The hypnotic lead single 'Jackie Down The Line', though, sees him firmly in control as he delivers a huge pop hook, right before sending his voice spiralling into an echo-laden vortex on the bridge". And it's Pitchfork again that notes how Chatten's "cad anthems", "steeped in self-loathing", are actually just as ready to be repurposed as "Wembley-ready wails". A sense of authenticity, torment and rawness, then — all elements that certainly resonate with the sensibilities of the indie audience. But also a capacity to deliver just the right lift for stadium-sized choruses that set fans' enthusiasm alight.

Placed at the centre of Claudio Lancia's review for OndaRock, though less frequently highlighted by Italian webzines and fans, is the band's relationship with its lyrics, which instead plays a dominant role in Anglo-American analyses (in more than one case, even overshadowing musical considerations). Some followers regard the poetic tone as one of the record's chief draws, and Steven Loftin of the British webzine Line Of Best Fit identifies the strength of closing track "Nabokov" in "an enveloping, all-consuming hurricane of noise and lyricism". Much of the critical response notes how "Skinty Fia" is a particularly introspective album. David Chiu at Newsweek calls it "reflective yet explosive". For Nme, "On the potent, virulent 'I Love You', Chatten puts himself on trial, dissecting his own worries before addressing himself to Ireland's youth". The word "poetry" also crops up frequently in comments on RateYourMusic, often alongside another one: politics.

The dual gaze cast toward Ireland and Britain — homeland and adopted home — is a central theme of "Skinty Fia". And it's dual not only because there are two nations involved, but because it is both caustic and affectionate at once. Nme again observes: "Grian Chatten's songwriting — who has previously tackled big topics like wage inequality in Ireland and youth disillusionment — has always had wider horizons than his peers, along with an ability to range across his country's future and its past". And again, Claudio Lancia on OndaRock: "The Irishman who struggles to fit into the fabric of English society, and who to this day is still not infrequently associated with the grim business of the IRA. [...] Criticism aimed at the English, but after the diaspora it's only natural that the lyrics of 'Skinty Fia' should also come down hard on the Irish government, guilty of not doing enough to help its own young people." Even in the eyes of readers, this fraught relationship with Irishness is a particularly appreciated local element: here is a band with international appeal that nonetheless refuses to abandon its roots, and instead makes them the very cornerstone of its artistic vision.

Free expression and a critical relationship with society, in a form of "engaged poetry" whose message resonates, in both Ireland and Britain, with more than one generation of listeners, whether longtime indie fans or younger listeners drawn to the band (and to other hyper-local acts like Sleaford Mods) because of the subjects it tackles.

From the cult of the new to guaranteed second-hand

The situation on this side of the Channel is well captured by Claudio Lancia's review: the blatant nods to past styles (the post-punk of Joy Division and Fall, but also the pop leanings of the Smiths, the Madchester rhythms of the Stone Roses, Oasis) create "a generational short-circuit: most of their audience isn't made up of their peers, but of listeners in their thirties and beyond who hear in these sounds the bands the five of them draw musical inspiration from".

One notices, precisely in connection with the pronounced revivalism of post-post-punk formulas, an interesting "reversal of judgment" compared with the nu wave of the 2000s, one that reveals a gap between how the two phenomena were received. Back in the days of Interpol, Bloc Party, Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and so on, the frequent accusations of plagiarism levelled against the original post-punk scene came chiefly from longtime listeners, who had known historic bands like Gang Of Four, Sound, Television, Chameleons and so on well before the new boom. Younger listeners new to both scenes, by contrast, used the modern bands as a gateway to the ones twenty years their senior, and often noted substantial differences between the two. Sweeping traits that made (it's obvious now) Bloc Party's hyperkinetic sound something quite different from the sharp edges of Gang Of Four, whom they were accused of aping. This same dynamic crops up — mutatis mutandis — in other revivalist scenes too: eighties-style neo-prog, for instance, was better received by younger listeners than by the progsters of the previous decade.

With Fontaines and their peers, though, the mechanism doesn't seem to work the same way. In this case, it's mainly seasoned fans of post-punk, indie and alternative who fall for the new bands, and the obvious echoes of the past are no longer seen as a problem but are, if anything, a crucial factor in the appreciation itself. Of all the aspects cited by OndaRock's followers, the most common by a wide margin is in fact the closeness to models from the '70s, '80s and '90s. What's more, it's the very same admirers who state that the band's style has no substantial new elements, and yet that this doesn't undermine — if anything, it enhances — the greatness attributed to the music they make.

Why is that? It's likely partly down to the simple fact that some of yesterday's "young" listeners are today's "old" ones, and just as they were well disposed back then toward recycling done with personality, they remain so now. But perhaps that's not the whole story. One of the defining values of 2000s indie thinking seems to have dissolved, replaced by an attitude that resembles its diametric opposite. Innovation no longer seems to be a fundamental yardstick by which the indie/alternative world determines musical worth. Retromania has by now blended into the landscape; the prevailing sense is that rock music has spent its momentum, and that any remaining enthusiasm can only spring, at best, from a passionate revisiting of styles already explored.

The feverish quest for the never-before-heard, which came from independent criticism of the Eighties and Nineties and had, by the early 2000s, merged with the need to sift through the huge volumes of music that peer-to-peer sharing made accessible, has run its course. Today's listener, now in their thirties, forties or beyond, whether for lack of time or out of a sense that such a demand no longer applies to the current landscape, cheerfully accepts the perceived stagnation — and along with it, the reign of the filters and aggregators run by webzines, which systematically highlight whatever music is most likely to land with a given audience. Realistically, the notion that Fontaines D.C. and other post-post-punk bands are merely reheating leftovers from the groups that came decades before them is just as questionable as the equations "Bloc Party = Gang Of Four" or "Marillion = Genesis".

Back then, however, such flattening comparisons were rejected by the bands' own fans; today, by contrast, they're seen by fans themselves as the primary lens through which to understand the music they love. One comment we read on our Facebook page is telling:

Fontaines have an incredible quirk: they're THE GREATEST COVER BAND OF ALL TIME. And I want to stress that I really do like them a lot. I've never come across a band where one track is pure Joy Division, another is a slow Irish ballad à la Pogues, running through all the most famous bands of the last few decades, always channeled at that pivotal moment between harder sounds and the crossover into the mainstream. Fun fact: their song I probably like best off the latest record, Roman Holidays, is IDENTICAL in sound, echo, reverb, tone and rhythm to at least two or three War On Drugs tracks. Who, incidentally, are themselves often accused of being a cover band...

What's left of rock?

The mechanisms discussed above shouldn't, in themselves, be labelled as negative. It's a welcome thing if a convergence of factors brings to the indie/alternative community that sense of "here and now" which is essential to genuine enthusiasm for the contemporary, and which many had felt missing for a while. The explosive potential was already latent among audiences, but Fontaines D.C. were the spark. As Alexis Petridis wrote in the Guardian ("A band that felt like a reset button for a moribund alt-rock scene"), and even more clearly in our own review: "Fontaines D.C. are here, they're now, they're working hard and they keep growing. We're watching them live, breathing them in, song after song, as they become something important. A feeling we were afraid we'd lost, for good."

Readings that claim the entire post-post-punk movement is "manufactured in a lab" simply because several bands in the scene are backed by a handful of shrewd producers (chief among them Dan Carey, who has worked with Fontaines, Squid, Wet Leg, black midi) sound rather forced. Wanting to build hype isn't enough to create hype: you always need the right band at the right time too, and for the indie/alternative crowd, Fontaines D.C. are exactly that (in good company with black midi, Black Country, New Road, Idles and so on).

Equally limiting, though, are the views that see this scene as the only flicker keeping rock's momentum alive. Mainstream phenomena like Italy's own Måneskin, or the renewed prominence of Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker — producer for Avril Lavigne and the man behind the pop-punk pivot of former rapper Machine Gun Kelly — show how guitar-driven sounds are, precisely in these years, regaining their pull on young and very young listeners. Along lines far removed from those most cherished in indie circles, sure, but with an audience reach on a completely different scale. Closer to home in terms of alternative values, an album like the new one by Jack White seems tailor-made to prove that rock language, suitably hybridised, can still produce unexpected, successful sounds. And widening the view to names, styles and territories less at the centre of the algorithm's spotlight — which is, after all, what webzines like this one try to do every day — the landscape fills up with other artists, cult favourites for audiences that are sometimes far from small: Britain's (if very America-leaning) Sam Fender, genre-shredding American Poppy, Austria's Bilderbuch, Japan's Polkadot Stingray, China's Omnipotent Youth Society, Mexico's Camilo Séptimo, Israel's Bar Tzabary...

But looking around is undoubtedly something our readers are used to doing. It's just that everyone looks in different directions, and at the level of trends, it's mostly the shared listening habits that stand out, creating, through social media echo chambers, the impression that only what's most talked-about actually exists. The fact that post-post-punk and Fontaines D.C. can unite fans of independent music like nothing else right now isn't a flaw, it's a strength. Yes, their appeal is buoyed by plenty of nostalgic feeling, and sonically the whole scene sits right at the edge of its audience's comfort zone. But then again, most of that audience is no longer twenty years old, at least in continental Europe, and isn't looking, musically speaking, for revolution at any cost anymore.

It's therefore up to the curious (or legitimately dissatisfied) listener to venture beyond their own bubble and encounter the many other things enriching the landscape right now. Anyone who in recent years has found a musical raison d'être in Fontaines and their fellow travellers has every reason to be excited. Everyone else should look elsewhere, and try not to be too bitter about it.

P.S. You've probably picked up on this between the lines, but as the author of this piece, Fontaines D.C. and most of the post-post-punk movement really don't do much for me. The closing invitation is aimed at myself too: the most instinctive reaction to an enthusiasm one can't share is often rejection. Had I put my opinions down in black and white a few years, or even a few weeks, ago, this piece would have been a disorderly rant of no interest to the reader. Instead, I tried to look at the question from other angles, and it seemed useful to draw on the impressions of those who have genuinely fallen for the phenomenon. I don't believe in the concept of the "average listener" or similar brutalisations of statistics, and that's why I chose to abstract things and frame the discussion in terms of community values. The effect is probably just as distorting, but I hope I've nonetheless managed to pick out a few readings that can be shared — by those who love it, and by those who'll go on not loving it.

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