It’s been a banner year for Fontaines D.C. The Irish rock group released one of the best albums of 2024 with Romance in August, expanding their sound and style, amassing widespread critical acclaim, and thrusting them in front of their biggest audiences yet. They also scored a pair of Grammy nominations, for Best Rock Album (Romance) and Best Alternative Music Performance (lead single “Starburster”).
“We’re just buzzing to have that experience, not necessarily to be on the red carpet and show ourselves off like that, but just to have a story to tell on our deathbed type of thing,” frontman Grian Chatten tells us from a tour bus in Leeds, thinking ahead to the Grammys ceremony in February. “I’m confident that we’ll treat it with a healthy sense of facetiousness and respect. I think a combination of the two is the best way to go.” (He notes that they weren’t able to attend the 2021 ceremony, where A Hero’s Death was nominated for Best Rock Album: “We were disappointed, to say to the least, that we didn’t get to go.”)
Ahead of two homecoming shows in Dublin –– “There’s an awful amount of emotion around it,” he says –– Rolling Stone caught up with Chatten to hear about the band’s “Big” year, wanting to make a folk album someday, stepping away for a bit, legacy and longevity, and more.
The band takes the stage at Brooklyn’s Warsaw club, May 2024.
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
You guys have been on tour for quite the stretch. How has that been so far?
Honestly, it’s been incredible. It’s the first time that it’s felt new for a while. I think the reason for that is the album and the response the album’s getting from the crowd, which sounds like a boring thing to say, but it does feel like there’s a reborn feeling to it. Obviously, at this point, I’m sipping on a Lemsip and I’m feeling the effects. My immune system’s down and shit like that. But I’m full of gratitude for the gigs — not that the shows are easy, but they are very quick to get wild now.
How do the energy levels at these shows compare to what you’ve experienced in the past?
It’s funny because as soon as [Romance] started getting any momentum, we started seeing that reflected in the response of the crowd. It was a bit scary at first, when the crowd started kicking off. I remember looking at the other lads on stage and just being like, “Jesus Christ, should we get extra security in?” But it was nice. The U.K. crowds, many of the cities here anyway, they’re pretty up for it. It’s good fun.
The crowd at Warsaw in May
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Are there any songs off of Romance that have taken on new lives after you’ve performed them live? I’m wondering how they translate onto the stage in ways that were unexpected or exciting.
You do all this emotional learning of a song, I suppose, without sounding too pretentious, if that’s possible. But then there’s a physical education involved, which usually takes a few shows to break in. I guess it’s more about your body relaxing and more easily inhabiting the song in a fluid way.
The first time we played “Desire,” physically I felt slightly confused as to whether it was a heavy tune or if it was a ballad. It was somewhere in between those things. But now I think I know what it is, and I think it’s something new for me anyway, which is interesting. “Here’s the Thing” is probably the highlight of our shows at the moment though. “Here’s the Thing” is the point where we achieve the closest thing that we’ve ever had to anarchy, I suppose. If it was up to me, I’d probably start the show with “Here’s the Thing,” and see where it went from there.
You throw in a decent number of older songs from previous albums in every set list. Is there a rhyme or reason to what songs you choose in each city?
We have a possibly skewed perception of what songs are going to go down in certain places. For us it’s important generally to keep a fair bit of our early stuff in the set because I think it’s good to not take our feet off the ground or forget where we came from in some way. It’s by playing the songs from our first album that you get those moments of appreciation for how far you’ve come, how many people are now watching the same song you’ve been playing for years. It’s important in a gratitude sense to keep one foot in the early stuff for us.
There’s been a lot of talk, one way or another, about the sonic shift that you’ve made with Romance. How does it feel to be drawing larger audiences with what you’ve been creating recently?
It feels good only because I feel like the locus of self-esteem is moving, for me anyways. It’s becoming more mine. There’s a genuine confidence that’s ascending proportionally with the upscaling of the audience size. I think if I had the same sense of self-esteem that I had five years ago and we were getting to this level, I’d probably be a bit shaken, but I’m a little bit more like, “Bring it on,” now.
What do you think shifted, if you can pinpoint it?
I’m going to give a real pragmatic football coach answer to that, because I can’t think of anything remotely poetic. My gut response is that I think it has a lot to do with being four albums in –– five I suppose for me, including my solo record –– and the fact that we’re just still fucking here.
There’s maybe a precariousness that comes with your first two releases, especially around your second release, that I think is both justified and probably useful. I think it has faculty. It can create really good art and also there’s almost like a career mortality. You feel like it’s going to end and you may as well just do whatever you want. For some reason that’s worked out for us. At this point, I am becoming generally more comfortable with the idea that people actually want us to do what we want to do anyway. Really. I think the majority of people do. I don’t think people want us to acquiesce or compromise. I’m sure people think that we are doing that already, but I don’t think we are. I think that I’m just doing the right thing with my life, really. I’m going to stop talking now.
No, that’s beautiful. Do you feel as if there’s more pressure in any regard?
I feel slightly intimidated by Romance in terms of going forward with the next record, which is a good thing. I feel, to be honest with you, a fundamental change that I’ve had, which is a really, really boring thing to say, is that I can’t really afford to get sick on tour at this point. There’s too many people that would be disappointed. I’m trying to look after myself out of respect for the fans and stuff like that.
There’s a lot of pressure in that regard. In terms of writing, it’s always just happened. It’s almost been like the songs grow themselves in the shade while we’re on tour and then we harvest them at the end and there’s an album there. We shift the songs around kaleidoscopically and maybe flesh some things out and then reveal an image that was already there, and then that’s the record. We’ve never gotten the right time to get into the studio and write the next album. It’s just been a harvest, you know what I mean?
“I’m just trying to play good shows at the moment”
Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone
What are the biggest challenges you face on the road?
For me it’s very important to have enough energy to be conscientious of my friends and family back at home and pick up the phone and be involved in their lives. It can be difficult to find the energy to do that at times. It’s very easy to get caught up with your own shit when you’re on tour. It feels like a bit of a revolving door or something like that. You’re surrounded by your own itinerary and I think it’s a very important thing for me to check in with people.
A lot of publications are starting to release their year-end best of 2024 lists, and Fontaines is landing on several, including Rolling Stone‘s. How much does that kind of industry recognition matter to you as a band, if at all?
I like punching up. To be at the top of lists and to win accolades and stuff like that worries me sometimes, because I feel like it’s robbing me of my opportunity to punch up. I feel like I don’t want anyone to perceive us as any kind of establishment band. I do get a little prang of anxiety sometimes when I see stuff like that.
I haven’t thought about it too much. I’m just trying to play good shows at the moment. These things percolate and land when you least expect them to. I’ll be a week into my Christmas holidays and I’ll go over to my granny’s gaff and I’ll have a bit of the Christmas fucking dinner and I’ll just start feeling slowly the effect of those things, maybe. I don’t know.
Were you expecting this response to Romance when you were writing it?
No, not necessarily. I got the word “romance” tattooed on my arm before we released and recorded the album. I’m wondering now, looking back to that, was I hedging my bets? I was aware of the fact that I could be walking around with a tattoo of the album that ended our career. But I must’ve done that subconsciously to convince myself that my opinion as the artist was the only opinion that mattered. That’s very important to me to try and keep that integrity, I suppose.
Like a premonition of sorts.
Yeah, exactly. Or a manifestation, to use the Instagram version.
You’re about to play two shows in Dublin at the end of this week. How does it feel to be bringing this album home?
When I first moved to London and I’d fly home every now and then, my eyes would fill with tears as we came into the coastline of Ireland because of all of the memories. Some of them were not necessarily forgotten, but a little bit suppressed in the way that people naturally do when they move countries. There’s more than nostalgia, it’s almost like upset. There’s just an awful lot of emotion around it. I haven’t been back very much over the last year or even two years.
The idea of bringing this album there and also ending our tour there and it being Christmas, which is when Dublin to me tends to look the most incredibly beautiful…. It’s going to be incredible. I’m actually just a bit overwhelmed thinking about it now. I don’t really know how to say. It’s going to be amazing.
Any spots that you and the boys can’t miss while you’re back there?
Well, a lot of them are pubs. I’m really looking forward to going there. But there’s a place called Brogans, which is probably my favorite pub in Dublin. I’m going to plug Brogans. That’s probably my favorite place. To me it has an air of…it’s quite specifically Dublin as a pub to me. It’s not a standard Irish pub. It’s like an Irish pub with a streak of relative city slicker in comparison to other rural Irish pubs. It’s my favorite pub in Dublin. I’m just looking forward to seeing the Irish Sea again from that side of things.
Are you even thinking about what’s next for you at this point in time?
Let me think about how much is good to say…I know we have an awful lot of shows. We’re pretty booked up until late next year. I would say we’re probably going to do another record around then, maybe. Then I think the time is probably coming where it might be good for everyone else for us to go away for a little while. I don’t want to saturate people’s airwaves or fucking news feeds or whatever. I don’t want to be overly omnipresent. I think it’d be good to consider that, but that won’t be for another while, for at least another record.
What would be the main reason for stepping away? For yourselves or for other people?
Well, I feel like the iron’s hot creatively now, so I don’t want to stop right now. But I’m also aware of what other pastures might be explorable if we take ourselves off the road a little bit. I don’t want to just mine one territory for the rest of my life without lifting my head up and seeing what else is around. Creatively, it would probably be a good idea at some point. I don’t want people to grow up listening to the radio in their parents’ cars or whatever and hear us on the radio all the time and decide that they don’t like us because we’re not their band. I think it might be good to just read the room a bit, I don’t know.
Fontaines D.C. have dates on the books through next August.
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
You guys expanded your sound a good amount on Romance. Are there any other avenues that you are thinking about exploring in the future?
Yeah, it’s always been on the cards to do a trad-influenced folky record. But I think maybe with the direction that we’ve taken particularly in the last two records, it might be more interesting for us to lean into and finalize where we’ve been headed a little bit more. I’m very interested in looking at the series of records as a whole and what story they might tell altogether. I’m thinking about what we as humans will have said, if anything, when it’s all over. I think we should think about that cohesively instead of just churning out tunes and not really thinking about the greater messages.
How often do you think about legacy?
It probably makes me sound really big-headed to admit that I think about it at all. But I think about it more. I’m still young, I suppose. I was going to say I’ll be 30 next year, but I know that’s not old.
You know what it is? It’s Black Star by Bowie. That set a precedent. What an indelible mark to leave in the creative world. I want to contribute something. I don’t just want to worship at the altar of my own ego or make tunes so that I can dance around and look cool. I want to have said something and contributed something. As I become more mature and maybe more sober-minded, those things matter more to me. Longevity in general matters more to me.
You’re not stopping anytime soon, is what I’m hearing.
No, I don’t think so. I think to stop is to go backwards for me. I think I might’ve said this to you before –– I feel still when I’m moving, I feel like I’m moving when I’m still. I feel restless immediately.
One last question about a line in “Horseness Is the Whatness” about love versus choice.Has the word that “makes the world go ‘round” changed since the album’s been out in the world?
Hope is the word that comes to mind for me. I know that sounds really cheesy, but I am tired of being cynical and pessimistic. For me it was a young person’s game to be a rebel without a cause and offer a solution. I’m striving to feel hope in myself and therefore inspire it in other people a little bit more.