This album is a masterful work of post punk experimentation and exploration of chaos, confusion and identity. It follows their incredible rise to success through two similarly great albums but different in tone and execution. This album loses much of their punkier louder thrashes and fills it in with expansive guitars and a slower tempo. This album emotionally is turbulent and full of displaced songs the song âThe couple across the wayâ takes the point of view of an old married couple seeing two young lovers move in and wonder what its like to be them âMaybe they look through to us and hope thatâs them in time,â the song ends with this line which can either be seen as a way of reaffirming that the old couple in reality are fine and in a good relationship or is showing how deluded young couples are to find themselves trapped in relationships like this old couple either can fit the album and itâs left to the listener. Another important song to the album is the song âI love youâ it is an overtly political song with slow melodic verses and faster intense screaming choruses said by the singer Grian Chatten to emulate the double edged nature of love, it is a song that takes the perspective of a wealthy Irishman who has moved abroad and who is âenjoying great personal success and a sense of cultural prideâ it discusses the corruption in Irish politics and its hopelessness to the youth with lines like âBut this island's run by sharks with children's bones stuck in their jawsâ this references the mass graves found at the site of former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway in Ireland. The remains found were the children born to unmarried/single mothers, a group vilified by the catholic church in Ireland during the 20th century. These mothers were sent to mother and baby homes managed by nuns, where they were abused, demeaned, performed forced labour and gave birth to said children who were immediately taken from the mothers. This is a stain on Irish history and one of the few atrocities mentioned in this song. â And they say they love the land, but they don't feel it go to wasteâ, âHold a mirror to the youth and they will only see their faceâ, âMakes flowers read like broadsheets, every young man wants to die â these 3 lines reference Irelands housing crisis and the narrators patriotism, how many Irish youth feel abandoned in their beliefs and political battle and the suicide rate of young Irish men respectively. This song is a masterful run through of the bands thoughts on the political state of their homeland for which they feel pride and detachment. The last song written by band member Connor Curley is meant to embody the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov and uses metaphor to comment on the need for compromise in a relationship illustrated as subservience, to illustrate how subservient it is to give up your life and autonomy for the love of someone else âI will be your dog in the corner, and I would light your cigarette.â. This album follows arcs growing a happy and hopeful side halfway through while being constantly surrounded by the hellish doom tracks such as I Love You embrace this song ends the album on a hellish doom note and ends the album as such. This album is a work of confusion and doom, in a time of uncertainty Fontaines DC have changed their sound and frame of mind and have embraced the hellish doom which confronts them and the confusion that comes with it and it has embraced their most compelling and sonically varied album yet.
