The importance of being 'Fontaines Dc'

'My childhood was small, but I will become big'. The Fontaines Dc play it cool, they always have. In the midst of a drunken speech they bring up the idea of forming a band, a sort of 'punk Beatles'. Lest they forget, they book a rehearsal room on the fly. The next day, stunned and surprised, they realise they have something that vaguely resembles a song on their hands. When they sit down over a beer, they pass around a notebook in which they each jot down their verses: they are poets who love Yeats, Kavanagh, Joyce and, above all, the beat heroes Ginsberg and Kerouac. Their rehearsal room is right behind the pub, a dark alleyway full of syringes and bad people divides them.

Meanwhile, they published two collections of poems:Vroom! and Winding. Then, they set up a small independent record label for which they released one promo and three singles in one year. They signed to Partisan, working on Dogrel, a tale of their Dublin through the lives of those scrabbling for a bit of dignity. A tale bathed in echoes of Pogues, Strokes, Fall and Joy Division that nominates them for the Mercury Prize. It's 2019 and the year after, despite the pandemic, comes A Hero's Death, where the gaze widens to the whole world and the sound is imbued with that Pacific breeze that inspired the Beach Boys, one of the band's less obvious passions and more ignored by the press, which is nominated for a Grammy. The hues become darker and more psychedelic, the Irish Times takes the perfect snapshot: 'Same band, different songs, same brilliance'. In the breaks of a long tour, the five write new material and reflect again on the concept of Irishness: the cover of the first record is a photo of one of the oldest circuses in the world, founded in Dublin in the 18th century. In that of its successor stands a statue of the Irish mythological deity Cú Chulainn. Now, they still look back to their roots, but it is thousands of miles away from the Dublin that, as they sang in their early days, 'in the rain is mine, a pregnant city with a Catholic mentality'. Thus comes Skinty Fia, which takes them to the top of the UK charts. It is gritty and bold; it adds new nuances to the band's sound, ranging from industrial to the lysergic rivulets of Primal Scream. Some paint them as the best of their generation.

Guitarists O'Connell and Curley, bassist Deegan, drummer Coll, who founded a traditional Irish music label, and vocalist Grian Chatten, author of a charming and melancholic solo album in 2023 entitled Chaos for the Fly, return in 2024 with Romance, their most experimental album yet; a love story in the midst of the end of the world. It is anticipated by the single Starburster, where hip hop, shoegaze and theatricality add to the power and magnetism of Fontaines Dc. Five years after their debut, the greatness they aspired to is now a certainty that can be experienced at the La prima Estate festival and in Rome on 23 and 25 June.