Fontaines DC combine Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Can You Feel My Heart’ and Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’
Fontaines DC and Bring Me The Horizon might not be two bands that naturally go together. But as the Irish troupe covered their song ‘Can You Feel My Heart’, they let the influence of the Sheffield heavy-rockers be known.
To wrap up the Australian leg of their tour, celebrating their new album Romance, Fontaines DC stopped in at Triple J and recorded a session for the station’s beloved ‘Like A Version’ series, where artists cover a song of their choosing.
The Irish band have always been one to pick some left-field cover options, recently also doing a version of Lana Del Rey for the BBC, but this time round, they chose to honour a band who are surprisingly very influential on them.
Conor Curley explained on the radio: “It was Grian [Chatten]‘s idea initially. I think the sound of that song, the kind of electronic elements and just the general vibe reflects stuff we were touching on on our last album Romance so it kind of seemed like a good place to start. And it’s a moody, beautiful song.”
When Bring Me The Horizon first broke out, they were a heavy rock band through and through. Now embracing more electronic elements, their evolution was clearly inspirational for Fontaines’ own switch-up on this new record.
During their cover, though, they also mixed in elements of Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, a choice that not only feels more suited for the group but once again honours their influences. Curley shared that the song was “probably up there with one of the first songs I learned on guitar in drop d [tuning]”, as for many players, Nirvana was a first port of call.
But in this cover, the guitars are basically all gone. Instead, they’ve gone for something synth-heavy and gothic, continuing to be committed to the different sound that the Romance era has brought about for the band. Yet just like on the album, it works for them as Chatten’s vocals contrast so interestingly with the new kind of instrumentation the group are playing around with.
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