FONTAINES D.C.

Edgy rock band with looping riffs, making Ireland dangerous again.

Something is brewing in the Irish capital – and it’s not just Guinness. Fuelled by the country’s long storied music and drinking cultures, a new crop of bands is harnessing noise and discontent and fashioning it into some of the most gripping underground guitar music the world has seen in years.

At the forefront of that pack are Fontaines D.C. Five lads who met in college. A shared affection for poetry brought them together plus they love everything from The Pogues to The Rolling Stones. But Fontaines D.C.’s sounds are far darker and grittier.

Their debut album Dogrel is at turns ferocious and flowery, loud and lyrical, straightened out by a decidedly poetic backbone. Dogrel itself is named after a rough-edged type of Irish working-class poetry that’s often looked down upon by elites.

Fontaines D.C. has shared stages with fellow noiseniks Shame and IDLES. And it is live that Fontaines D.C. really come into their own (check out the widely shared KEXP session they did in the summer of 2018). A driving rhythm section charges forwards as the band’s guitarists’ stabs of noise atop the melee with a hypnotic, looping approach. It’s all topped off by vocalist Grian Chatten’s barked tales of disillusionment and mental dissolution, delivered with a thick Dublin accent. Gripping his microphone stand like a crutch, he’s the wide-eyed ringleader of it all.

Fontaines D.C. is the kind of band that people are telling you that you can’t miss. Those people are right. So be there when they play Roskilde Festival 2019.