Fontaines D.C. – Boys in the Better Land (Chords)
I’m very glad Fontaines D.C. came along and showed that rock music isn’t dead quite yet. Boys in the Better Land sticks to the old rock formula of “three chords and the truth” and makes it sound exciting and vital again.
There are two versions of the song. The original version is the much slower “Darklands version”. Which really threw me off for the balls-to-the-wall version on their album Dogrel. And it’s the album version I’ve written. In terms of chords, they’re the same. But the arrangement of the Darklands version is slightly different with the solo coming after the first chorus and missing out the repeat of the second verse and the pre-chorus and chorus that follow it.
The song is in the key of E. If you don’t fancy using any of the variations of the E chord, you can always slap a capo on the second fret and play the E – D – A chords as D – C – G respectively.
Suggested Strumming
For everything but the chorus, you can use this for the E chord:
d – d – d u d u
On the D:
d – d –
And on the A:
d u d u
Together it sounds like this:
The only exception is the repeat of the second verse. There you play three lots of this on the first E:
d u d u d u d u
And in the chorus, play this on the E three times.
d u d u d u d u
Then the same as the verse strum for the D and A.
Twiddly Bits
Here’s a version of the riff the lead guitar part that first blasts in at bar 9 of the intro. It crops up throughout the song. Sometimes in a reduced form where it’s just switching from -45- to -44- every two bars.
And, finally, a version of the solo that I play using a pick. Those two thick black lines on each stem indicate that it’s tremolo picked in constant sixteenth notes. Or, if you’re anything like me, as close to constant as you can manage. If you prefer, you can just pick each note once without losing too much.
