Published by Do615 on 9/23/22.
In just three short years removed from their debut album, Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. have quickly positioned themselves as one of rock’s most vital new voices. The critically acclaimed Dogrel took hold of the United Kingdom in 2019, but the response to 2020’s A Hero’s Death was a rare one; a pandemic album expanded that buzz worldwide, even if there were no live audiences to connect with. Now touring on their third record and performing at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville on October 1, bassist Conor Deegan III, more commonly known as Deego, is just as excited as the fans to be back at shows.
“First tour we did back was actually in England in the end of 2021, and that was really sentimental. Everyone was so –and it’s continued through this year as well– all the people who are coming to our gigs are just so happy to be back at concerts,” Deego reminisces. “Being able to be in touch with a culture that brings them together with their friends a lot of the time, and makes them feel like who they are.”
Although the positive response to A Hero’s Death was immense, Deego concedes that without a tour to support it, there was a delay in the album feeling tangible.
“You can make albums and stuff, but after it’s made it becomes very ethereal without the gigs. It doesn’t have a present day-to-day job thing,” Deego explains. “Without that, it was a lot of existential contemplation, if you know what I mean. Just sitting on your couch going, ‘am I still a musician? Am I exactly this?’”
He recalls their album release celebration in a hotel room in Dublin, but due to Covid gathering restrictions, only the band could be in attendance.
“It just felt like the biggest non-event ever. It was quite sad in a way,” Deego says. “Obviously it was great we were still doing our music, but it was like we threw it down a well.”
Although that album came and went for the band, the creation of their third record, Skinty Fia, kept the band preoccupied throughout the height of lockdown.
“This third album is us being in a different kind of isolation in London when we’re writing it, and riding the tubes –you know, the underground– everyday to go to work to write this album for like five hours a day for months,” Deego recollects.
“It was this really bizarre flip of things because on our second album, we were isolated because we were living this extremely unnormal [sic] life of traveling around and being away from our family, but now we were forced to be grounded and to do the 9-5 routine when everyone else wasn’t … We were suddenly forced to be in this thing we had almost started to lust after because you really start to miss routine and your family and your home life, and then we got it back but everyone else was gone.”
Isolation, angst, civil unrest, and the influence of Irish and beat poetry are common threads across Fontaines D.C.’s three albums, but there is always an evolution of sound. Deego hopes fans follow the band’s train of thought as they navigate new creative ground.
“We have this kind of central philosophy that we inherited from The Velvet Underground. I personally have a fascination with them because they have this balance between art and pop, and in this sense, they know through the structures of pop, through making something appeal to someone, if you can do that in an artistic way, it’s almost like a higher form of both,” Deego says.
The bassist views each record as a reaction to the one before, taking its lessons learned and finding new ways to refresh their sound. He draws a parallel to Arctic Monkeys’ latest single, “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball,” in that it’s the opposite of their early work, but each album is a logical transition from one to the next.
“After having made the first [album, Dogrel], we wanted to make an album that was a bit more diverse and showed a bit more of what we could do,” Deego explains. “But then with the third album, we thought we’d really like to make something that’s more focused now. Not necessarily just going back to the first one, but just something now that we’ve done these experiments and learned how to do these different things, how could we bring all these pieces together into some songs that are more succinct and more focused?”
Traces of Dogrel’s frantic, youthful energy are found throughout Skinty Fia, but Fontaines D.C. is not necessarily that same band gigging in the Dublin music scene. Their knack for spontaneity and improvisation has turned into a strength, but Deego has joked in the past that they felt like they had fooled Partisan Records into signing them.
“We really had this energy from the very start of the band of just doing it first and figuring it out later. I think that’s part of what makes us a really good band now, but made us a really bad band at the beginning because we just used to write these songs, not really know how to finish them, kind of come up with something, then at the gig kind of just wing it,” Deego recalls. “That was our detriment at the start, but now it’s kind of our thing where we’ll have the courage to play a brand new song at a festival in front of ten thousand people or whatever or more, just because we’ve been doing that since we were terrible. Of course we can do it now, we’re alright.”
Retaining that energy has been essential to their live show. Now that they have had time to break in Skinty Fia on the road, this batch of songs is beginning to take on new life just in time for their latest U.S. tour.
“I think the best one off the new record is ‘I Love You,’ for sure,” Deego says. “That song has just evolved loads live and people are really enjoying it, and I love the way people move when they’re dancing to it. It’s something that really interests me and I want to make more music that makes them move like that.”
As the band makes their live debut in cities across the nation, including Nashville, Deego is excited to dive into the intricacies that make America unique.
“You come from Europe and the languages change every couple of hundred miles and the cultures are so distinct in such an overt way. It’s easy to go to America or to look at America and see it as homogenous because everyone speaks the same language, you see a lot of the same chain places around, but the more that I come back, the more I realize that it’s extremely diverse,” Deego muses. “I’m really interested to learn more about that diversity. Even the concept of all of your different southern cultures – like we’re going to New Orleans. I can’t wait for that just to see how the people are different there, you know?”
Deego is admittedly more interested in tracking down a plate of southern BBQ than he is hot chicken, but Nashville culture is bound to be a vital component in their understanding of the American south. As they continue to write new material during soundchecks prior to shows, audiences that follow might just luck out on a spontaneous night and get a taste of Music City’s influence themselves.
