Ten times better than Taylor Swift: Romance, by Fontaines D.C., reviewed

Almost all modern popular music is afflicted by a desperate yearning for importance, and thus – as it translates these days – electronic bombast, which is of course available now at the flick of a switch in the studio. The song is not enough, nowhere near enough. What you need, to elevate your infantile and asinine observations of the world and your sad lack of a good choon, is confected importance. This has been increasingly true since about 1965, but never more so than now. The song is not enough? That’s because it’s not a very good song, kiddo. Write a good song and, you’ll find, marvellously, it really is enough.

Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. are a good case in point. Post punk, of course, but within that rather arid and tuneless milieu a band hitherto possessed of plenty of hooks and a quantum of energy. They still have that here, on which, bless ’em, they imagine is a dystopic fantasy.