More about: Fontaines D.c.

As well as their signature hazy, melancholic ballads and energetic stadium anthems, post-punk band Fontaines D.C. are often defined as being assertively Irish. Lead singer Grian Chatten hauntingly yells his frustrations with modern Ireland in a thick Dublin accent on stage, brandishing the shamrock tattoo on his wrist.

In a typical English fashion I could joke that, before we know it, Chatten will be up there pouring Guinness over his head and doing the Riverdance. Yet these would serve as examples of reductive Irish stereotypes that Fontaines can’t stand.

Dogrel (2019)

Since the release of their debut album, Dogrel, in 2019, the band have risen to international stardom. This year alone they have embarked on a mammoth world tour, performed an electric set on the Reading and Leeds main stage and have recently been announced as the support for Arctic Monkeys on their 2023 North American tour. Yet their early tunes were firmly set in the city of Dublin, the band’s home at the time. Throughout Dogrel, Chatten sings vividly of life in the Irish capital, his site-specific descriptions and social commentary serving as an intoxicating setting for tales of heartbreak and ambition.

The opening track ‘Big’ instantly blasts open the record with the brilliant first line: “Dublin in the rain is mine / a pregnant city with a Catholic mind”. The capital is supposedly fertile and full of opportunity, yet its newfound sense of social liberalism clashes with entrenched traditional Catholic views. Bear in mind - it was only in 2018 that abortion was legalised in Ireland for up to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, signalling an existent yet painfully slow change of attitudes. With its defiant punk sound, the song declares its rebel spirit - borrowed from traditional Irish music - that will pulsate throughout the rest of the album. 

Each track continues to explore the complexity of Irish identity, as well as the risk of being consumed by nationalism. In the singalong banger ‘Boys in the Better Land’, Chatten describes meeting an obsessively anglophobic taxi driver who only smokes Irish cigarettes and “spits out Brits out”. Whilst the band do not venture too boldly into themes of class and poverty, they do criticise the pressures of capitalism and infatuation with money around them in ‘Too Real’ and ‘Chequeless Reckless’. The romantic finale of the album, ‘Dublin City Sky’, presents a love for a partner that is almost inseparable from a love for Dublin itself. The song is reminiscent of The Pogues’ ‘A Rainy Night in Soho’, with its swaying 3/4 time and crooned tale of being in the company of a woman in a rainy city. This mutated Irish love ballad concludes a thoroughly Irish story.

A Hero’s Death (2020)

Don’t get too comfortable though - in Fontaines’ second album we are dragged from the shabby comfort of Dublin City and into a state of placelessness. Written whilst on their US tour, A Hero’s Death’s lack of Irishness reflects the band’s distance from their native home. The melancholic opening track ‘I Don’t Belong’ seems to simultaneously mourn and embrace this lack of identity. Meanwhile, ‘Living in America’ tackles newfound fame and being lazily branded an ‘Irish Punk Poetry’ band: “Snowman coaled, pigeonholed, cooed to death”. 

The album takes on an international feel - such as in the Beach Boys-inspired harmonies of the titular track. Yet the lyrics of ‘A Hero’s Death’ have an Irish accent even before Chatten’s vocals bring them to life. His assured words of wise, paternalistic advice, such as “Say your favourite things at mass / Tell your mother that you love her” and “don’t sacrifice your life for your health”, evoke an image of a man in the pub nursing a pint and spinning yarns about his youth. Despite their detachment from the nation’s issues of the time, the band’s Irishness still insists on weaving itself in.  

Skinty Fia (2022)

The third and most recent album is where the Irish essence is arguably at its strongest. Why? Because now we’re in England. Irish art, literature and music is filled with stories of emigration and often the need to distance oneself from Ireland in order to better understand it. Released in April of this year, Skinty Fia represents Fontaines’ further exploration into the depths of Irish identity now that most of the band have moved to London. 

The album’s title is Irish for “the damnation of the deer”, an expletive often used by drummer Tom Coll’s great aunt. The band cling to their Irishness abroad in the opening track ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo’, inspired by the case of Margaret Keane. The late Irish woman was denied having the phrase - which means “in our hearts forever” - inscribed on her grave by the Church of England in case it was perceived as a ‘political statement’. In ‘Roman Holiday’, Chatten expresses guilt for living amongst the people who so often distrust and discriminate against his own: “I don’t wanna see the Queen / I already sing her song”. 

The penultimate track, ‘I Love You’, is an angry, impassioned confession from Chatten as he sings of his love for Ireland but also the pain that its flaws cause him. Criticising the dominant two-party system and their arbitrary differences, he berates “the gall of Fine Gael and the fail of Fianna Fáil”. There is also a reference to the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home scandal - in which the bodies of 800 babies were uncovered in a mass grave - in the line: “This island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck in their jaws”. The indignant outburst also blames capitalism and its individualist nature for the high rate of young, male suicide in the country: “flowers read like broadsheets, every young man wants to die / Say it to the man who profits, and the bastard walks by”. Amidst the crashing drums and pleading vocals, the band reconnect with Irish issues and therefore reassert their devotion to their homeland. 

As Fontaines D.C. have grown and branched out internationally, their music has emigrated with them. They have seemingly earnt a special place amongst much of the contemporary Irish diaspora, who are invited to flock together and revel in their national identity at Fontaines concerts. This was a phenomenon I witnessed at this year’s Reading and Leeds festival. On stage, Chatten wore a green in-ear monitor, Coll thrashed away on a green drum kit and Mayo-born Connor Deegan III swung a guitar tagged with a woollen plait in his county colours. Meanwhile, the crowd was peppered with gaelic football jerseys, Irish flags and even plumes of orange and green smoke as flares were lit during ‘I Love You’. Whilst the band are not solely defined by their nationality, it is certain that their conflicted expressions of identity form a valuable part of a wider discourse on what it means to be Irish today. But, no matter what, do not tell them that they sound like Guinness. 

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More about: Fontaines D.c.