Fontaines D.C.: ‘You can feel trapped when people perceive you as one thing’
On their career best fourth album, Fontaines D.C. have shed their skin of old to deliver something more fantastical. Grian Chatten tells us the story behind their evolution.
By Nick Reilly
It’s the first night of Glastonbury 2024 and over on the Park Stage, Fontaines D.C. are delivering a headline set for the ages. The crowd that stretches all the way back to that area’s Ribbon Tower is the perfect reflection of the anticipation that’s buzzed around Worthy Farm all day. As they boldly end on two new songs, it feels like the perfect introduction into a vibrant new era that should cement their place as generational greats.
But while it may have been one of the weekend’s stand-out sets, there’s one person who can recall surprisingly little of the whole thing: the band’s enigmatic frontman Grian Chatten. “I can’t remember much of it because I was running on adrenaline,” the Dublin singer tells me days later as we stroll through woodlands near his North London home. We’d originally agreed to chat at his flat, but a sense of restlessness in the singer – both post-Glastonbury and in the middle of a day of album interviews – means we’re chatting under a canopy of leaves instead.
“I think I’d probably be a liar if I said there wasn’t some nerves in there too. But it doesn’t always manifest itself like that with me,” he says.
“I just get an overwhelming sense of energy and I’ll be slapping surfaces, hitting tables and it’s a good buzz. I’m prone to hyperactivity and I feel a bit corrupted by the whole spirit of the event. I know it felt like one of the best gigs we’ve ever done, but I really can’t remember.”
In the coming year, it’s fair to say that a whole lot more furniture should prepare for a swift backhander from Chatten. The band’s first arena tour takes place this Autumn, before 50,000 fans head to Finsbury Park next summer for their biggest show to date.
If all goes to plan, it’ll be the perfect victory lap for their fourth album ROMANCE, which arrives this Friday and just so happens to be the best thing the band have ever done.
For their first three records, Fontaines D.C. were seen in many quarters as an inherently Irish band – whether that was chronicling life in Dublin on their 2019 debut, or latterly exploring the diaspora guilt they felt after moving to London on 2022’s Skinty Fia.
But on ROMANCE, it feels like the band have hit the hardest of resets. You need look no further than the video for the storming, trip-hop infused lead single ‘Starburster’ to see they’ve employed an aesthetic that answers the not-so age old question: what would happen if Korn were to have a baby with the Klaxons? Moody monochrome t-shirts are very much out; oversized sports tops, candyfloss pink hair and wraparound sunglasses are very much in.
“We wanted to make sure that people couldn’t squeeze what we’re doing on this record into a box,” Chatten explains. “It’s easy for people who want to hear ‘Boys in the Better Land’ over and over again to decide that that’s what aspects of this record are doing, and we wanted to push away from that. You can feel consistently trapped by people’s ability to perceive you as just one thing.”
A solitary listen to the album is enough to realise they’ve achieved this change in spades. There’s an imposing, Kubrickian darkness to the title track, while ‘Starburster’ is defined by Chatten’s guttural intake of breath at the end of several verses – a moment inspired by a panic attack that he experienced when he was travelling to producer James Ford’s house and felt overwhelmed by the track itself.
While in no means a political album, Chatten says it’s inspired by the issues of the day – particularly on the brooding ‘In The Modern World’. “I think I’d said what I had to say with the stuff before and it wasn’t that interesting to me anymore,” he says. “There was other stuff keeping us [up] at night. Like many people I’ve faced climate anxiety and the sense of dread at our responsibility there and an awareness of what’s going on. Palestine too. It’s difficult to move on with your own lives when you let a certain amount of that in. When you let that reality in, it’s tricky not to let it keep you up.”
“There’s a great book by a friend of mine called Nikolaj Schultz about climate change called Land Sickness and I’d advise people to read it,” Chatten says. “It’s a good picture of somebody who’s just being eaten alive by their own awareness of their contribution to the destruction of the planet. But to make the decision not feel anything in order to go on? That’s a really disturbing fact of modern life.”
If it’s not war or climate anxiety keeping Chatten up all night, it’s a struggle to flip between being on-the-road in one of the world’s most acclaimed rock bands and returning home to north London. This, he explains, was the reason for the panic attacks that inspired the guttural howl on ‘Starburster’. “It’s hard to assimilate and get that structure of life,” he reflects. “I think you have to accept the fact that you don’t live anywhere for a certain amount of time, otherwise you’ll just be homesick all the time.
“I think I sometimes give up on the idea of home and then it takes a bit of time to get back to it. The boys from Shame have a great way of dealing with it, I think [Charlie] Steen [the south London band’s frontman] goes to a sauna with a load of old boys to talk business!”
He adds: “Before we started this batch of touring I thought I’d go away by myself for a weekend and not speak to anyone for a few days. In the end I just decided to go back to Dublin and I got a hotel near where my grandparents live. I just spent five days hanging out with them and that helped those nerves.
“I think that sense of being uprooted can be a really fertile soil for creativity,” Chatten says. “To feel like you don’t belong somewhere and heading out of your comfort zone. It encourages me to go quite far into my own head too, which at times has created some good ideas for songs, you know?”
He also explains that he’s an overthinker – which has meant he’s sometimes struggled to enjoy the achievements of being in a generational band. “I’m always someone who has something that needs to be fixed. I’ll Google symptoms for my fucking left toe,” he says.
“I’ll come backstage and be white in the face. I’m working on it and the other lads are definitely a good influence on me, but it manifests as me not always being present at good moments for the band.”
In turn, Chatten explains, this has led to a slight apprehension towards the major headline slots that are seemingly in their future. “It’s a scary thing, if we were to inhabit those spaces and not be present for any of it. That would be a really sad thing. But maybe I’m just worrying about worrying here.”
And for all the slickness of their new era, Chatten says that the raw spirit of these boys from Dublin remains as intact as it ever did. “The infrastructure, visually and sonically, feels a bit more robust, but we’re always going to have a ramshackle element,” he says of their bold new era. “Whether we’re playing big arenas or not, there’s always going to be a sense of anarchy in what we do and the way we perform. We’re still just walking on a tight rope.”
With one of 2024’s greatest albums under their belt, you feel like there’s little chance of them falling off…