Movies, Memories, Mullets And Mohicans

On Monday, Fontaines D.C. dropped a second teaser from forthcoming fourth studio album Romance.

 

Favourite closes the album and it's possibly their most poppy effort yet. It's the first song of theirs that prompts me to think of The Chameleons, if they had decided in the mid-80s to make a conscious decision to crack the UK Top 40 singles chart. Grian Chatten sings over a jangly guitar line that evokes that era's perfect indie meld of melancholy and euphoria, with harmony lines and uptempo rhythm driving the song along. 

The video's a treat, too, mostly made up of snippets of family home videos, interspersed with the band having fun in Madrid. Starting off with (I guess) a young Grian singing the Nativity song Rat A Tat Tat before coming to a halt with "I don't know the rest", there's a rapid fire of nostalgic images before settling on the adult Grian in a Spanish skate park, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing, "Did you know I can claim the dreamer from the dream?" 

Quite a contrast from previous (but no less excellent) single Starburster.

But those Mullets and Mohicans, lads...! Whether ironic, post-modern or just a genuine attempt to reclaim history's most horrific hairstyles, it's 'nil points' from me.

 

Fontaines D.C. will be playing at Glastonbury next Friday, headlining The Other Stage. As a longtime armchair audience member, I don't need to suffer the anguish and conflict that IDLES are performing simultaneously on The Park stage as hopefully both sets will be available on BBC iPlayer.