Fontaines D.C., have come back with an unexpected new song that resists any attempt to be categorized. “It’s Amazing To Be Young” is an event. How does it feel to belong to someone or something, though, and how are we to know that pain isn’t just the price we pay for love forever? Vibrating deeper than an arm around a friend or the whoosh of people snaking on and off a dance floor, it’s a beautifully raw, genre-blurring anthem that distills the chaos of youth into something poetic, something visceral, something that lingers long after the final note fades.
A truckload of new material written between now and their record-breaking headline tour, the band Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums) strengthen and stretch their sound into hypnotic territory. Their latest single is more than a postscript to Romance; it embraces post-punk’s introspection while folding in textures that feel almost familiar, almost out of reach, almost dreamlike.
“It’s Amazing To Be Young” clocks in at just over three minutes, a contradiction of magical hair-raising emotion, a gentle blast of optimism in a world that seems anything but. Chatten’s voice, simultaneously commanding and intimately severe, intones lines that land like a fist to the gut. “It’s the cost that brings you down, But it’s amazing to be young.” “It’s Amazing To Be Young” recognizes a heavy reality that can assuage the beauty of youth but is unwilling to let that take away from the beauty of youth. It’s a reminder, a requiem, and a rebellion.