Music / Fontaines D.C.

L-R:Conor "Deego" Deegan, Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Tom Coll, Grian Chatten (bottom)

• Influences: Joy Division, The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, The Pogues, The Dubliners, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Modern Lovers, The Beach Boys, U2, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Gilla Band, Happy Mondays, Tom Waits, My Bloody Valentine, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, The Cure, David Bowie, Swans, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, The Beatles

Fontaines D.C. are a Post-Punk band from Dublin, Ireland. Known for their incessantly catchy melodies, diverse array of influences, and frontman Grian Chatten's deadpan vocal delivery and poetic lyrics, they're one of the most acclaimed bands to emerge from the isle in the past decade.

The band formed in 2017 while the band members were all students at the BIMM Institute in Dublin, where they bonded over a shared love of classic Irish poetry. They initially called themselves The Fontaines, named after Johnny Fontane from The Godfather, but were forced to change it to Fontaines D.C. (which stands for "Dublin City") after learning of an identically named band from Los Angeles. After putting out a few singles and two short poetry collections, the band released their debut album, Dogrel in the summer of 2019, to widespread acclaim. Receiving rave reviews across the board, it immediately put the band on the map as people to watch.

Their second album, A Hero's Death, dropped in 2020, heralded by singles "I Don't Belong" and "A Hero's Death", the latter of which featured a music video starring Aidan Gillen. Darker and more musically complex than Dogrel, with prominent influences from The Beach Boys and My Bloody Valentine, it proved that they weren't willing to rest on their laurels.

After a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the band reconvened for a third album, Skinty Fia in 2022. It quickly became the number one rock album on both UK and Irish charts and received warm reviews from critics.

Band members:

• Grian Chatten - Lead vocals, tambourine, lyrics
• Carlos O'Connell - Guitar, backing vocals
• Tom Coll - Drums, guitar
• Conor Curley - Guitar, backing vocals
• Conor Deegan III - Bass, guitar, backing vocals

Tropes displayed by this band:

• Album Title Drop:
  • From "A Hero's Death".
  "Don't give up too quick
  You only get one line, you better make it stick
  If we give ourselves to every breath
  Then we're all in the running for a hero's death"
  • From "Roman Holiday".
  "When they knock for ya don't forget who you are
  Skinty Fia"
• Always Someone Better: Georgie Barnes, the protagonist of the video for "A Hero's Death", is overshadowed by the puppet guy, who gets the band laughing uproariously while everyone completely ignores Georgie. Near the end of the video, his normal bird puppet is replaced by a puppet of Georgie getting his intestines picked out by a raven, and he starts actively chasing and tormenting him.
• Anti-Love Song: They have quite a few.
  • "The Couple Across the Way" is from the perspective of a miserable old man stuck in a loveless, abusive marriage wondering if the happy young couple that moved into his apartment building will end up like him one day.
  • "Dublin City Sky" is about a drunken fling with a woman at a pub that leads to an argument that ends with her storming off in tears.
  • "Jackie Down the Line" is about a toxic, mutually abusive relationship.
  "I don't think we'd rhyme
  I will wear you down in time
  I will hurt you, I'll desert you
  I am Jackie down the line"
• Bilingual Bonus: "In ár gCroíthe go deo" on Skinty Fia is Irish for "In our hearts forever".
• Color Motif: All of the music videos and photoshoots related to Skinty Fia have had dark red dominate the color palette, particularly the album cover.
• Darker and Edgier: Each successive album has been darker and sadder than the one before it. Dogrel had some dark songs on it, such as "The Lotts" and "Dublin City Sky", but those tended to have Lyrical Dissonance at play and were still fairly lively and fun. A Hero's Death, meanwhile, has a consistently dour tone, with tracks like "I Don't Belong", "Oh Such a Spring", "Living in America", and "Sunny" conveying abject despair. Skinty Fia is even darker than that, with a persistently depressive tone, "The Couple Across the Way" in particular being far and away the saddest song they've ever made.
• Ethereal Choir: "In ár gCroíthe go deo" features a choir repeatedly chanting the title throughout the song.
• Facial Horror: The janitor in the "A Hero's Death" video is revealed to have a demonic, snarling face that looks as if it's covered in burn scars. On the next repeat of the cycle, his face is actively melting.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The protagonist of "A Hero's Death" finds himself in a particularly strange and hellish one.
• Literary Allusion Title: "Bloomsday" and "Nabokov" on Skinty Fia.
• Motor Mouth: During the bridge parts in "I Love You", Grian starts singing so rapidly it's a miracle he doesn't run out of breath.
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting:
  • "I Love You" is a very bitter love letter to Ireland itself, lamenting its long history of sectarian division and colonial exploitation that still haunts it to this day.
  • "The Boys in the Better Land" is a sarcastic commentary about how many Irish artists try to leave Ireland at the first opportunity once they find success.
  "If you're a rock star, porn star, superstar
  Doesn't matter what you are
  Get yourself a good car and get out of here!"
• New Sound Album: A Hero's Death was a much darker album than Dogrel, with increased sonic influence from Proto Punk and shoegaze and more depressive lyrical themes. It also incorporated quite a few Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies, especially on the Title Track.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The cover for Skinty Fia is a fawn standing in the entryway of a house bathed in blood red light. There's not really anything sinister happening in the image, but it feels extremely ominous nonetheless.
• Perishing Alt-Rock Voice: Grian Chatten is well known for his nasal, deadpan voice and thick Dublin accent when singing. Lou Reed is a pretty clear influence on his vocal style.
• Precision F-Strike: From the bridge of "I Love You": "I had to be there from the start, I had to be the fucking man"
• Surprisingly Gentle Song:
  • "Oh Such a Spring" on A Hero's Death is a sad ballad with no percussion.
  • "The Couple Across the Way" is a folk song with no rock instrumentation at all.
• Surreal Music Video:
  • "A Hero's Death" is a Concept Video starring Aiden Gillen as Georgie Barnes, a neurotic talk show host who's set to interview the band but finds himself stuck in a bizarre "Groundhog Day" Loop where he keeps finding himself back in his dressing room about to take the stage, with increasingly unsettling Lynchian touches with each loop.
  • "Jackie Down the Line" has footage of the band playing on a stage covered with roses interspersed with a strange story about a weird little man in a tracksuit and a red dunce cap stalking a group of women.
• Surreal Horror: The video for "A Hero's Death" has the protagonist stuck in some kind of nightmarish "Groundhog Day" Loop, with the people around him gradually being replaced with Jacob's Ladder-esque demons.
• Title Track: Both A Hero's Death and Skinty Fia feature one, though the actual Album Title Drop of the latter is found in "Roman Holiday".