“Town’s Dead”: Contemporary Irish Popular Music and Dublin City

ABSTRACT The increasing “common sense” hegemony of neoliberalism in the west and to the emergence of the internet as a dominant cultural influence have been linked to a “cultural slowdown.” For Mark Fisher and others, contemporary popular culture has lost track of the unfolding conditions of contemporary capitalism and the ability to produce anything new. Instead, it recycles old tropes and forms and is stuck in nostalgia for unlived eras. This article weighs this contention against the surge of contemporary popular music coming from Dublin, Ireland, focusing on the work of Fontaines DC, Kojaque, Pillow Queens, and For Those I Love.