Fontaines DC wrote a bunch of great songs, most of which were in their debut album Dogrel. But to me Big is the one that stood out.
It's a fast piece along the long line of other punk or post-punk anthems. It starts with a compelling beat that keeps the piece going all along, and it's noisy and loud.
And it's short, less than 2 minutes, and this is also in keeping with a post-punk ethos: e.g. hardly any song by a great post-punk band like Minutemen lasted over 2 minutes. Who needs 5 minutes when you can make an impact with less than 2?
The lyrics make this all the more impactful: Fontaines describe Dublin through the eyes of a pusher, and in an ingenious way touch upon threads like edonism, escapism, ambition, the link between the city's past as a colonial outpost and its present as a city of diverging, and at times contrasting trajectories. All that in less than 2 minutes, mind...
And it's remarkable how there is nothing contrived about this: Fontaines not only sound from the place, but their lyrics display empathy and love for the place, its history, its people. They do not "caricature", they do not watch people from afar... this is music from the people, to the people.
So, aye, this song really enshriened Fontaines in the heaven of great bands, and I will always come back to "Big" and Fontaines DC
