Meet the Irish post-punk rockers Elton John says are ‘the best band out there’
Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten’s back is causing him grief.
Not that you’d know it – onstage, the Irish rocker is ceaseless, throwing up a heavy boot onto a speaker, twisting one arm behind him, bending his neck back as he sneers into the microphone.
But in a quiet moment on a pause in the band’s four-city, two-festival Australian tour, he explains that back problems or not, his on-stage persona is beyond his control.
Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten in action in 2023 at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel.Credit: Rick Clifford
“I’ve never done less of it because of my back, because I just don’t have any control over it,” Chatten says. “It’s not really me up there.”
He explains that the high-energy stagecraft masked the impostor syndrome the Dublin post-punk band, formed in 2014, felt early on. But they should be beyond that now. The release of their fourth album Romance in August last year, marks their rise from young contenders to international heavyweights.
Irish band Fontaines DC are touring Australia again following the release of their Grammy-nominated album Romance.Credit: James Brickwood
They were nominated for two Grammys, including best rock album. Elton John told Chatten on his podcast they were the “best band out there at the moment”. Album single Favourite was on Barack Obama’s end-of-year playlist. Last week while in Brisbane they accepted the BRIT award for best international group (with a gracious nod to fellow nominees Amyl and the Sniffers).
Chatten says the Australian shows so far, in Perth, Brisbane and at Wollongong’s Yours and Owls Festival, have been among their best. Playing in a country with a large Irish diaspora, recent and historic – 2.4 million Australians said they had ancestry in the 2021 census – has something to do with it.
“People are still dotted all around this vast continent singing old Irish tunes, and telling old Irish stories,” Chatten, who has family in the country, says. “I think it is probably more emotionally charged for people, because there is that extra dimension of missing home.”
Bassist Conor Deegan III (or Deego) jokes he is surprised Australians “aren’t sick of us yet”, but says he feels at home in Australia and its culture. He lauds the work of Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard, while Chatten, who talks up the theatrical and cinematic influences on Romance, holds forth on Australian cinema.
His favourite actor is Joel Edgerton – he praises his 2022 film The Stranger, as well as classics Picnic at Hanging Rock and Wake in Fright. “The expanse, the vastness of the landmass, makes the stories feel remote, but still huge in their significance,” he says.
Meanwhile, the appetite for Ireland’s cultural exports is only growing. The band is part of a group of young, Irish artists dominating on the world stage, from actors Saoirse Ronan, Barry Keoghan and Paul Mescal to writers Sally Rooney and Nicole Flannery, and musicians such as Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap.
“I think a lot of places that … box above their weight or whatever, a lot of it is to do with having culture taken away from them, or mutated by colonialism. You see it all over the world.”
Deegan has a parallel explanation. This new generation of artists was born into a more Catholic Ireland, during the Celtic Tiger economic boom, but came of age after the Great Recession and in a secular country. “Any generation that is subjected to that change is going to have something to say about it,” he says.
And they are collaborating – Chatten has performed with Kneecap, and the music video for Romance single Bug uses clips from Keoghan’s new film Bird, which also stars guitarist Carlos O’Connell.
“I think Grian’s gone for a pint with Paul [Mescal],” Deegan adds.
Nevertheless, the abiding bond is between the members the band, as evidenced by new single It’s Amazing To Be Young. Chatten describes the song as a “lullaby”, explaining they wrote it at O’Connell’s London home, where he was looking after his baby daughter.
“We had a couple of guitars, and we decided that we’d let her choose the notes that we’d sing next, or he’d play next. So she deserves some writing credits, really.”
The song indicates a softer sound than previous albums, including 2022’s Skinty Fia. An exception is Starburster, inspired by a panic attack Chatten had on the London Underground, and influenced by nu-metal band Korn, a role model for performing angry music well into middle-age.
But Deegan insists the new single is a sincere in its optimism at a time when the band are starting to look back on the preciousness of youth.
“I’m up there with a sore back, singing ‘it’s amazing to be young’. It does feel a bit stupid,” Chatten says.
Fontaines DC play at Sydney Opera House Forecourt on March 6; the Palace Foreshore in Melbourne on March 8 and 10, and March 9 at Golden Plains Festival in Victoria.