Skinty Fia is Fontaines’ best work to date: its maturity is apparent from the very start, as is the band’s capability and talent.
Through the clashing of narrative and musical expressionism, it's a tome where murder, heartbreak, and all the souls lost between these disparate notions reside – and Skinty Fia is a rich, full-bodied third entry, with Fontaines DC proving they’re not only here to stay, but here to dominate.
The third is where it all coalesces, where they take everything they’ve learned and apply it with all their new-found expertise and experience. When it works it’s a masterpiece.
Arguably, the band’s best offering yet.
Moody, grittily philosophic, and cautiously revealing, Skinty Fia spotlights a distinct band as they pivot toward mid-career status, mining the expressive paradoxes on which longevity is built.
This is what they have always been best at ... bringing the listener into their world and showing them the darkest corners alongside the rays of light.
What drives it forward isn’t morbidity or anger, but a search for connection. It’s this that makes it not a dirge, but an oddly bright snapshot of life’s confusions from a band capable of capturing them brilliantly.
Skinty Fia — both phrase and record — might hint at a grim extinction event, but by staring down the prospect of built-in obsolescence, the loss of self, Fontaines D.C. sound full of new life.
Skinty Fia is all about those superior responsive mechanisms and as such seems as much a final part of a trilogy as anything else.
With Skinty Fia Fontaines D.C. deliver a brooding post-punk sensual feast with a distinctly Irish flavor. Longing, alienation, and malice simmer under the surface.
The Irish post-punk band’s most demanding and musically adventurous album is also its most open-hearted, striking a perfect balance between tough and tender.
If it wasn’t for Grian Chatten’s doomy vocals, this could be a different band to the one that made Dogrel.
On Skinty Fia, Fontaines DC have nailed their themes of urban decay and defiant immigrant soul. They just need to find the courage to fully emerge from the chrysalis of their indie and post-punk influences.
By no means simple yet never overtly difficult, ‘Skinty Fia’ is a self-confessed awkward third album. A record about growth, and how subtle shifts in identity can lead to profound outcomes, it finds Fontaines D.C. moving ever outward into a realm of their own.
The tensions that consume Fontaines – musically, personally, philosophically – continue to propel them forward: Skinty Fia is another triumph for this era’s most vital group.
Skinty Fia won't tell you much about whether that vein of insecurity that runs below the band's surface level of confidence can fuel good art indefinitely; in its best moments, though, it may make you want to hear the band crack open that ground and let their strangest selves out completely.
On Skinty Fia, Fontaines D.C. dip their toes into several different sonic pools that lie outside their typical post-punk and gothic inspired sound.
Fontaines D.C. return with Skinty Fia, a dark and moody album steeped in the history and politics of Ireland.
Skinty Fia is an analysis of evolution and change, but this new album reflects above all the own progression of a band that climbs the ladder with talent.
[Today 2 rather concise reviews compared to usual, as you may have noticed I don't have much time to write at the moment, but it's a nice week so here we go].
Fountains D.C is one of the archetypes of the Post-Punk Revival band of this last decade but the Irish prove on this 3rd album that they want to break those chains forever. I ... read more
Starting out unmistakably Irish In ár gCroíthe go deo (Gaelic: In Our Hearts Forever) is like a Celtic vocal chant that is not only layered majestically with rich choral harmonies and arguably Grian Chatten’s most enchanting vocal to date, but it’s also masterfully arranged as it shifts and builds with clearly defined momentum and intensity with unanticipated and almost The Prodigy styled drum n’ bass breakbeats, the urgency and the emotion build in perfect ... read more
From 83 to 92. It´s very underrated and I think they really did something genius with this one.
1 | In ár gCroíthe go deo 5:59 | 86 |
2 | Big Shot 4:13 | 81 |
3 | How Cold Love Is 3:24 | 70 |
4 | Jackie Down The Line 4:01 | 87 |
5 | Bloomsday 4:30 | 77 |
6 | Roman Holiday 4:28 | 84 |
7 | The Couple Across The Way 3:56 | 70 |
8 | Skinty Fia 3:55 | 83 |
9 | I Love You 5:05 | 87 |
10 | Nabokov 5:21 | 83 |
#1 | / | Hot Press |
#1 | / | MondoSonoro |
#1 | / | Northern Transmissions |
#2 | / | Les Inrocks |
#2 | / | Louder Than War |
#3 | / | OOR |
#3 | / | WXPN |
#4 | / | DIY |
#4 | / | God Is In The TV |
#4 | / | NME |