Fontaines D.C. - The Dubliners

“Dublin in the rain is mine, a pregnant city with a catholic mind”

They're five lads who grew up under Dublin's rain and were weaned inside the pubs of the Irish capital; at first glance, their names might seem almost interchangeable. In alphabetical order: Carlos O'Connell plays guitar, Conor Curley plays the other guitar, Conor Deegan III is on bass, Grian Chatten is the poet-singer, and Tom Coll sits behind the drums. All avid readers, all sporting a bohemian look and a distinctly Nordic aplomb, they got to know one another while attending BIMM, the British and Irish Modern Music Institute, a college with eight campuses across Europe aimed at training professionals for the music industry. In Dublin, the institute is located in the historic Liberties district, home to St Patrick's Cathedral (the country's largest and most important place of worship) and the seven floors of the Guinness Storehouse.

Dublin in 2017, when the five of them start rehearsing together, is in the grip of great artistic ferment. The city seems to have digested the property bubble crash of a few years earlier, has regained its confidence, and aspires to become a serious alternative to the dominance of London and Berlin, helped in this, among other things, by having English as its official language (unlike, say, the Mediterranean countries). There's a band in town that's already made a record and caused a stir, called Girl Band, even though there isn't a single girl in it: their 2015 debut, titled "Holding Hands With Jamie", quickly becomes a guiding spirit for every young act hoping one day to climb out of the basement and introduce itself to the world. Meanwhile, the lads start writing, and the first serious outcome of their literary work is the publication of a couple of poetry collections, "Vroom" and "Winding", the former inspired by the poets of the beat generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg), the latter by Irish classics (Joyce, Yeats, Kavanagh).

"My childhood was small, but I'm gonna be big"

Like many kids their age, the future Fontaines D.C. grow up listening to music of the most disparate genres, helped by the endless possibilities offered by streaming platforms, where everything is instantly available. It's thanks to this kind of approach that their compositions, starting from an unmistakably post-punk root, are able to enrich themselves with a wealth of stylistic references. The Pogues, for instance, or U2, but also elements of britpop, wave, alt-rock and folk. With this varied mix unconsciously swirling in their heads, it doesn't take them long to finish their first original songs: by 2017 a first single is already in circulation, titled "Liberty Belle", named after a pub the five of them used to frequent during their college days. On the B-side sits "Rocket To Russia", and from that precise moment on, Fontaines D.C. can officially say they exist, finding it easier to land their first gigs. Easier still when, again in 2017, a second single is released, and this one proves decisive. It's "Hurricane Laughter", a guitar whirlwind out of which emerges a declamatory vocal capable of slamming you against the opposite wall. Something important is happening: these lads can clearly write, and they don't stop at crafting great songs, no — they back them up with carefully thought-out videos too: go and dig up the one for "Hurricane Laughter" in particular, it looks like the work of a seasoned band.

Here too two songs are released together: "Winter In The Sun" lands on the B-side, bringing to four the tracks made public so far. Meanwhile, their precious first year of activity comes to an end. Barely a week goes by before, on 6 January 2018, Niall Byrne in the pages of the Irish Times showers the new band with praise. Little more than a short piece, but a highly effective one, in which he underlines just how authentic and recognisable Grian Chatten's Dublin accent sounds, a sort of badge of belonging. Incidentally, the singer was actually born on the other side of the Irish Sea, in Barrow-In-Furness, right across from the Isle of Man, to an English mother and an Irish father, although he himself considers himself Irish by adoption, having grown up in Skerries, a seaside town just a few kilometres from Dublin.

Throughout 2018, Fontaines D.C. keep doling out crucial singles sparingly: in February "Chequeless Reckless", paired with the band's first true anthem, "Boys In The Better Land"; in November it's the turn of "Too Real", and, ladies and gentlemen, the job is done — all the more so since, at the same time, they sign their record deal with Partisan Records.

Meanwhile, back home, people are starting to take notice: in 2018 the London magazine diymag.com devotes a long feature to them, presenting them as one of the most exciting next big things around, while for Stereogum.com they're the band to catch live, an opinion reinforced by the sight of the explosive performance (you can find it in full on YouTube) they gave on 14 May 2018 for the prestigious KEXP in Seattle, a coveted showcase that gives them huge visibility on American soil too. The stage becomes the dimension in which the band unleashes its full force, making their songs even more incendiary.

“And there is no connection available”

On 12 April 2019, preceded in the immediately preceding weeks by the further singles "Big" and "Roy's Tune", Fontaines D.C.'s debut album, Dogrel, is released — for nearly half a collection of what the band had already put out (though the previously released tracks are re-recorded and rearranged, becoming even more direct), and for the rest, equally accomplished unreleased material. For those already following them, Dogrel is a confirmation; for those who don't yet know them, it becomes a genuine revelation. The first word spoken on the album is, fittingly, "Dublin", proof of a solid bond with their homeland and hometown. "Dublin in the rain is mine/ a pregnant city with a catholic mind": so go the lines that open the record, from which emerges the damp, overcast mood, the sense of belonging, the Catholic soul, but above all that "pregnant city" which conjures up the great artistic ferment defining it, a city brimming with ideas and cultural movements — a song that, read this way, turns into a genuine promotional ad for the capital. The song is called "Big" and expresses, besides what's already been said, the band's ambitions, after a childhood and adolescence spent right under its nose.

The proto-punk explosion of "Big" is followed by the homage to the Clash (or to the Libertines, take your pick) of "Sha Sha Sha", a stinging new version of "Too Real", the wave-tinged introversion of "Television Screens" and the devastatingly powerful "Hurricane Laughter", which contains one of the first catchphrases crafted by the band: "And there is no connection available". Ireland and its capital, especially its most forgotten, working-class corners, are the settings where the narrated scenes unfold, often with a cinematic touch as well as a deeply poetic one. The ballad "Roy's Tune", for example, tells a genuinely sad story set in the slums, devoid of hope, very much in a No Future vein, managing to make you feel the icy Irish wind full in the face. "Boys In The Better Land", on the other hand, stands as a critical outpost against society, with a snappy riff and a deeply ironic lyric. Gloomy and melancholic, Dublin takes centre stage again in the poignant, folk-tinged closer titled "Dublin City Sky". Rounding out the tracklist are "The Lotts", built on a bassline decidedly à la Cure, and the already familiar "Chequeless Reckless" and "Liberty Belle".

"Is it too real for ya?"

Mastered at London's Abbey Road Studios, Dogrel has a very well-defined sound, and nails the band's ambitions, both musical and literary, with Chatten's lyrics slotting perfectly into the garage-rock fabric honed during rehearsals. Dogrel is Record Of The Year for Rough Trade and for BBC Radio 6 Music, earns a prestigious Mercury Prize nomination and lands near the top of just about every year-end chart. For OndaRock, in 2019 it takes the bronze, right behind Lana Del Rey and Nick Cave. Despite having just one album to their name, their fellow countrymen jokingly rank them as Ireland's second-biggest export, right after Guinness: enough to turn the head of even the most modest of artists. A fame also earned through long months spent on tour, often alongside Shame or Idles, and not just across Europe but also in the United States, where they play around twenty cities in May 2019. Just one album, and there they are, the undisputed leading lights of the new Irish scene, edging out their fellow Dubliners Murder Capital by a whisker. The icing on the cake is a ferocious performance at Glastonbury Festival in late June. They're not headliners — and it won't be the last time...

"Life ain't always empty"

At this point, Grian Chatten's biggest worry is whether he'll be able to write a second album that can at least live up to the debut. But any such fear is swept away when, just a few months later, the first traces of what will become the band's second work, A Hero's Death, start to circulate — released on 31 July 2020, and OndaRock's Album of the Month for August. The new songs reflect the many experiences the band has lived through in recent months, opening up their lyrical horizons towards new subjects, partly shedding the poetic-yet-local city reportage in favour of more "global" themes, often leaning on psychological analysis and inner feelings. Chatten, in an interview given to BBC News, points out that he no longer feels entitled to write about a city from which, in fact, he's been almost constantly away for the past two years. His life, and that of his bandmates, is no longer as empty and repetitive as that of so many friends still stuck downtown. The lads have gained notoriety, are imitated by their "rivals" and idolised by fans, and have shown the world they possess both inspiration and talent. Much has changed in their lives; what remains is that accent, used as an unmistakable mark of identity, leaving no doubt as to where they're really from.

"Life isn't always empty", Grian repeats six times over in the title track, "A Hero's Death", a kind of decalogue of things to do before it's too late, to avoid future regrets, a handbook of advice dispensed while stressing the sincerity needed to make one's message convincing and authoritative ("When you speak, speak sincere/ And believe me friend, everyone will hear"). "A Hero's Death" came out in May, right in the midst of the Covid-19 emergency, just as all the touring commitments that should have catapulted Fontaines D.C. straight into the mainstream pantheon were sadly being cancelled and pushed back to the following year. But the new record came out anyway, with no fear of being unable to promote it properly: eleven songs that are more markedly introspective than the "barricade" urgency of the debut, though the mood shifts from track to track, each one showing a very distinct character. The starting point remains post-punk roots, but the leaden malaise of Joy Division, or of certain Wire records, alternates here with a search for light, drawing as much on vaguely Britpop hooks (on "You Said", over Sonic Youth/Pavement guitars lies an unapologetic vocal straight out of Gallagher, Albarn and Ashcroft) as on the catchy nonchalance borrowed from the Strokes ("A Hero's Death", complete with ironic backing vocals). Echoes of the traditional music of their homeland surface midway through, in the modern folk of "Oh Such A Spring", the most melancholy moment of the set: amid rain, clouds and tears, spring becomes a metaphor for a youth that slipped away too soon. Sly, nagging nostalgia.

"I don't wanna belong to anyone"

Chatten is a sensitive young man, and he immediately sensed the danger lurking behind such rapid success. From the very first lines of "I Don't Belong", fittingly placed at the top of the tracklist, Grian sounds shell-shocked, worried about the future, demanding autonomy, expressing the wish not to be swallowed up by the system, claiming his own safety, both physical and psychological. It's the same unease once howled by Eddie Vedder on the epochal "Corduroy", written after he saw a copy of his own jacket displayed in a clothing-store window, feeling as though it had been ripped off his back like his own skin. Just as Vedder withdrew into himself, giving up interviews and contact with the public, Chatten understands the importance of social relationships, yet warns of the potential dangers posed by television, guilty of broadcasting a "Broadway cabaret" in which everything about whoever's in the spotlight - joys and sorrows alike - gets hurled at the viewer. He addresses this in "Televised Mind", which opens with a bassline, soon joined in quick succession by drums, a tremolo guitar and another guitar firing off mighty riffs. Chatten almost never shouts; his storytelling comes across as poetically conversational even when he launches into one of the many slogans he loves feeding the audience, repeated to the point of exhaustion. On "Love Is The Main Thing" he claims that "love is the most important thing", but he does so in a flat, depressed voice, worn down by disillusionment, trampled by waiting, laying his delivery over drums that mimic the sound of a train on the tracks, as if it were their own "Still Ill", with the guitars twice tearing through the rhythm section with force. A dark, gloomy song, deliberately "locked", stripped of the harmonic release a chorus would have provided, built to underline the sense of unease caused by a feeling that longs to take flight but never quite manages to. Thoroughly Smiths-like.

And here we are at the long-awaited moments meant to raise the aggression level: "A Lucid Dream", a razor-sharp slice of wave played with the intent of hitting the listener straight in the face, and "I Was Not Born", into which doses of the Stooges are grafted. But the decisive track in this respect is the razor-edged "Living In America", delivered with the same menacing stride that made "Bullet The Blue Sky" great, a fiery reckoning played out in a baritone vocal register. Dead center. The "softer" side of Fontaines D.C.'s songwriting is instead relegated to the back of the tracklist, where two ballads are strategically placed: the first, "Sunny", with a psychedelic flavour, the second, "No", which isn't afraid to let further U2 influences shine through, recalling in this case the aching harmonies of "All I Want Is You". When Grian raises the pitch singing "You feel/ You feel" the emotional level shoots through the roof: it's the ritual that generates one last, unforgettable collective shiver, setting the soul alight. An unforgettable fire. The perfect close to a truly convincing record.

“That was the year of the sneer, now the real thing’s here”

A Hero's Death is named Album of the Year 2020 by Ondarock's editorial staff and by several other specialist outlets, and racks up a long list of accolades, among which a Grammy Award nomination in the "Best Rock Album" category stands out. Every major international festival scrambles to book them, but just as Fontaines D.C. seem poised to conquer the world, the pandemic makes everything more complicated. Lockdowns and restrictions keep them off stage for months, hitting emerging bands particularly hard. The quintet makes use of the time to write the songs that will end up on their third album, and as soon as they can, in the latter part of 2021, they reclaim the stage.

In September 2021 they take part in the compilation I'll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute To The Velvet Underground & Nico, delivering a bold and convincing cover of "The Black Angel's Death Song", among the tribute's most successful moments. The following month they're finally able to pull off a 20-date tour in 27 days covering much of the United Kingdom. Meanwhile Carlos O'Connell, one of the two guitarists, relocates to Paris, while the rest of the crew moves their base to London. The "Emerald Isle" is still too small if you're aiming to become somebody.

The choice to live in Old England is never easy for an Irishman, and Fontaines D.C. tell that story on Skinty Fia, the third album, out on April 22, 2022. Their first record made as expatriates is a treatise on the modern (self-)perception of irishness, no longer observed from within (as happened on "Dogrel") or while squeezing in a few dates around Europe (on "A Hero's Death"), but from the other side of the Irish Sea, continuing to develop a tangle of styles that goes well beyond the crowded pen of new post-punk (within which more than a few have tried to lock them up), settling into a formula that by now is utterly recognisable. If you're Irish and you want to have a phrase in Gaelic carved on the grave of a deceased loved one, you risk the Anglican Church treating it as a provocative, almost terrorist act: a real story like this supplies the subject of the opening track, a liturgical crescendo, a prayer with an unpronounceable title that can be rendered as "Forever In Our Hearts". The Irish still struggle to integrate into English society and are not rarely associated with the grim business of the IRA. Grian Chatten goes out into the street to breathe in the London atmosphere, but in the end prefers to hang around with his fellow countrymen: he admits as much over the round, rolling groove of "Roman Holiday", his own "Roman holiday" in London Town, the perfect song that in an ideal world would sit in heavy rotation on every radio network, just like the instant classic "Jackie Down The Line", which, not coincidentally, has already become one of their best-known songs.

Barbs aimed at the English, but given that there was indeed a diaspora, it's no surprise that the lyrics of Skinty Fia also come down hard on the Irish government, guilty of not doing enough to help its own young people: "I Love You" is the blandest of titles, chosen to disguise what is actually Fontaines D.C.'s political song, serving as a counterpart to "Bloomsday", on which saying goodbye to their hometown weighs like a boulder. It's the darkest stretch of the album, gloomy backdrops recalling the Cure, while traces of the Smiths crop up in the hypnotic "How Cold Love Is". These are reference points that create a generational short-circuit: most of their audience isn't made up of peers, but of people in their thirties and beyond who recognise in these sounds the bands that musically inspire the five of them. To avoid overly cerebral comparisons (spanning the whole of wave lore, from the Fall to Interpol, by way of Joy Division and fellow Dubliners Whipping Boy), the quintet confirms its own evolution, writing great songs while respecting no constraints whatsoever. They range from the institutional little corner reserved for traditional instincts ("The Couple Across The Way" is their own version of "Rear Window") to authoritative indie-rock underpinned by a powerful guitar drone ("Big Shot", the only track written entirely by O'Connell), from the successful inclusion of electronics in their sonic mix (the title track is the prime example) to the energetic triumph of the closing "Nabokov", a shoegaze carpet rolled out to host Chatten's voice as it hybridises Gallagher and Ashcroft, a moment that will please anyone who loved "Hurricane Laughter" and "Living In America". But on Skinty Fia, what used to be pure onslaught now dries out, turning into reflection, and credit must be given for how hard it is to play less and softer while keeping the same credibility.

Throughout 2022, as Fontaines D.C. sell out show after show and get booked at most of the major music festivals, Grian Chatten lands a couple of notable collaborations. He duets with Kae Tempest on "I Saw Light", featured on the album The Line Is A Curve, and joins Leftfield to shape the vocal lines enriching "Full Way Round", included on This Is What We Do.

In early March 2023 the band shares "'Cello Song", a cover that will appear on the tribute album The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs Of Nick Drake, a 25-track compilation honouring the English songwriter who died prematurely in 1974 from an antidepressant overdose. Among others, Ben Harper and John Grant also take part in the tribute. The band also has fun - all together - acting as backing band for Slowthai on the excellent title track of UGLY, bringing a slightly dissonant guitar sound to the song.

While on tour in the United States supporting superstars Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C. release a deluxe edition of Skinty Fia in September 2023. The new release, featuring alternative artwork, is titled Skinty Fia go deo and, besides the original tracklist, includes eight additional tracks. Seven previously unreleased recordings are live takes: there's "Big Shot", captured during the Irish quintet's performance at Glastonbury Festival 2023, plus six more stripped-back versions recorded during a moving, almost completely unplugged live session.

Besides the self-penned "Jackie Down The Line", "Roman Holiday", "I Love You" and "The Couple Across The Way" (already released on the Skinty Fia Sessions EP), covers of U2's "One" and Whipping Boy's "Twinkle" have been included, an extremely meaningful double tribute to two bands from their own city. Closing out the selection is a remix of "In ár gCroíthe go deo" courtesy of EDM veterans Orbital.

The deluxe edition of Skinty Fia arrives after the well-received solo debut of singer Grian Chatten, Chaos For The Fly, released in early May. A series of overlapping images with blurred edges, a nocturnal kaleidoscope lit by the lights of fairground attractions, set to the backdrop of "The Score", a gentle crescendo set in motion by a handful of notes from acoustic guitar, xylophone and viola, gradually joined by drum machine, bass and synthesizers. A considerable risk, at first almost a kind of trauma, hard to process and come to terms with for anyone used to pairing the Irish singer-songwriter's voice with the ever-shifting jolts delivered by Fontaines D.C. in just four years. The pages of Chaos For The Fly, however, belong to a diary so intimate and personal that it demanded different treatment from what it would have received within the band. Produced together with Dan Carey, who also appears as a multi-instrumentalist, the record puts the quality of the lyrics front and centre, while the sounds - carried by the waves rippling along the shores of Stoney Beach during Chatten's nighttime walks - weave together chamber-folk, fragments of electronics and flashes of pop-rock.

Once past the opener, the way is cleared for the reflective, loose-limbed semi-ballad "Last Time Every Time Forever", which sets the guidelines for the tracks that follow. The agitated rhythm of "Fairlies" is led by a violin, an effective nod to traditional Irish music, which together with the guitar flits between solitary life, wordplay and "honest lies". In the dim light of an elegant lounge club, the piano of the breezy "Bob's Casino" takes shape, on which Georgie Jesson's ethereal voice repeatedly trades off with Grian's, while the close is instead built around the trumpet played by Freddy Wordsworth. Next come the piano chimes of the intimate, melancholy "All Of The People", while "East Coast Bed" lulls the listener with passages that nod to electro-folk, steeped in synthetic echoes with an eighties flavour. The sparest of nursery rhymes, "Salt Throwers Off A Truck", and the slow-burning "I Am So Far", one of the album's best lyrics, lead into the close, entrusted to the none-too-optimistic "Season For Pain", where a raw, vaguely Nirvana-esque riff can be glimpsed in the background of the second verse, and an unexpected, lopsided coda, complete with occasionally ghostly backing vocals, an analogue Swarmatron synth and a Wurlitzer piano, that cover the artist's final words.

"Maybe Romance is a place"

Preceded by no fewer than four singles, plus a couple of other tracks duly road-tested live, Romance arrives at the end of August 2024 with a few surprises still to be revealed: the eleven songs contained within it, though built on contrasts, turn out to be far more solid and tied to the band's past than the promotional teasers might have suggested. Anyone who feared too much of a "pop" turn, given the fluorescent outfits and colourful hairstyles paraded in images circulating for months (on stage in Rome this past June they looked like they'd just walked out of a rave), can now rest easy: Romance, the fourth album by Fontaines D.C., despite showing a lower dramatic quotient than in the past, retains a decisive rock backbone (though do these categories still mean anything?). Less nervy and at the same time more accessible than their previous work, Romance is not a barricade-storming record the way "Dogrel" had to be, so densely packed with Irish pride, but the guitar links to the band's history are unmistakable, especially in the resolute alt-rock brandished proudly on "Death Kink" and "Here's The Thing". With Romance, Fontaines D.C. continue their personal process of drifting away from their homeland, in constant search of new places, new references, new directions to take. If "Skinty Fia" two years earlier shifted the vantage point from Ireland to London, where 4/5 of the band relocated (the fifth member ended up in Paris), Romance zooms in on an even more cosmopolitan outlook. The five dubliners are no longer the lads with big dreams, wandering around Trinity College or Temple Bar: life on tour, promotional trips, interviews in every corner of the globe have made them worldly-wise citizens of the world, and global (indie) rock stars.

A natural consequence of this process is the rise in the number of outside influences reflected in the quintet's songwriting. While on the opening title track Grian Chatten echoes the inflections of Thom Yorke beneath a cascade of synths, the following "Starburster" unveils unexpected, vividly coloured architectures drawing inspiration from funk/hip-hop, depicting a chase during which Chatten conveys the urge to catch his breath. While "Sundowner" (sung by Conor Curley) introduces spot-on dream-pop atmospheres (did someone say Slowdive?) and "Desire" carries echoes of very early Coldplay, the orchestrations enriching the melancholy ballad "Horseness Is The Whatness" share the same retro flavour as the recent Arctic Monkeys, with whom Fontaines D.C. shared a US tour just a few months ago. That's no coincidence, given the choice to enlist producer James Ford, who was at the helm for "The Car" and "Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino", the records that marked the more intimate turn taken by Alex Turner's band. Not continuing the fruitful partnership with Dan Carey, one of the most in-demand producers around, clearly signals the firm need to come up with something different. The band takes risks, calculated ones, and chooses the challenge, nipping in the bud any potential risk of endlessly repeating themselves: a new creative identity accompanied by the writing of several hyper-melodic songs, among them "Bug" and "Favourite", and by a clear improvement in Chatten's vocal performances. These eleven tracks compress everything Fontaines D.C. are today, a group of friends hurtled towards well-deserved worldwide success who try to keep a solid shell of normality intact. Amid romance, dystopia and panic attacks, Romance's only flaw is that it doesn't present a truly complete turn: it introduces new stylistic hypotheses without fully committing to them, avoiding the danger that would come from a clean break with the past. Even though audiences don't usually reward projects that remain halfway across the river, Romance has everything it takes to become the band's biggest commercial success. All things considered, it won't disappoint longtime fans (who will know how to appreciate the ability to reinvent themselves without losing their identity) and it will certainly be able to win over new ones

To Be Continued…

There aren't many guitar bands today that can boast having reached and consolidated, in the space of so few songs, such a well-defined personality. Fontaines D.C. have managed to build, in a remarkably short time, a sound that makes them resemble only themselves, escaping any real comparison, with no risk of being mistaken for present or past acts. The inevitable stylistic similarities are mentioned only to simplify the points of reference: in reality the quintet has already become a new yardstick in its own right for bands starting to venture into stylistically related territory. An extraordinary achievement, accomplished by skipping steps and engineering a formidable balance between old and new, between tradition and contemporaneity, between "rock" and "pop", staying "garage" while still managing to sound "for everyone", building a sumptuous story told in images, in which every musician gets the chance to carve out the space they deserve and want, without egos getting in the way.

And then there's this guy, blessed with the songwriting, the voice and the face to become a star, right at a time when there's a real hunger for new heroes able to light up the stage of a less conformist kind of rock. Alternative and intellectual, with a clean, reassuring baby face, he really does seem like the right man at the right moment. Fontaines D.C. are here, they're now, they're working hard and they keep growing, swapping the courage and brashness of youth for an already mature vision. We're watching them unfold in real time, breathing them in, song after song, as they become ever more important. Thirty or forty years from now, we want to picture them still out there, waving the Irish flag in the rain. With Grian Chatten telling the story of how one day he picked up the sceptre once held by Bono Vox.

Contributions by Martina Vetrugno ("Chaos For The Fly")

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