Grian Chatten, frontman and lead singer of Fontaines D.C., is in a good mood. Who wouldn’t be if they were in his shoes? His band have had two gold-certified records in a row, never had an album land outside the Top 10 in the charts and are staring down the barrel of a summer of huge sold-out shows, including London’s Finsbury Park and Belfast’s Boucher Playing Fields.
It’s an ascent so rapid that it’s become a cliché to even mention it. But that’s not why Grian is in a good mood. He’s in a good mood because he’s just had a day off in New Orleans and used the time to go on a tour of a local swamp. “We saw some alligators and fed them marshmallows,” he says with a laugh. “I’m not really sure how good for them that is, but that’s what we got told to do. It was great.”
We’re speaking to him down a phone line, but you can still hear the smile on his face as he recounts the hard-won downtime in what is otherwise an incredibly hectic time for both him and the band. In the middle of a US tour, they’ve also just released a deluxe edition of fourth album ‘Romance’, complete with three new songs.
“The tour’s been great; it’s gone off without a hitch,” he says. “We’ve hit the Southern states over the last week, and I get very excited down here – I think Louisiana is probably my favourite state now. But the whole tour has been made a lot easier knowing that every night, no matter how your day’s been or how you feel personally and privately, you get on stage, and there’s passion in the faces of the audience members. That makes it way, way easier, and it also makes it easier to work through other things in your mind when you’re on stage.”
“A lot of people have engaged with it to the point that they’re coming to the shows dressed ‘Romance’-y”
It’s an attitude that feels a million miles removed from the Grian of 2020, who still bore the scars of a touring schedule so gruelling that it left him with “no sense of environment or place whatsoever”. This is partly a result of the band learning from their mistakes – sensible tour routing is now a top priority if the band’s upcoming shows are anything to go by, as is ensuring enough downtime to at least get a decent night’s sleep. It’s also in part a luxury afforded by how much bigger the band now are, with even the venues in America, a country which is notoriously hard to make an impact in, now averaging capacities of a thousand plus. Most of all, though, it’s a shift in attitude that Grian has undergone as time has gone by.
“We all probably got better at dealing with it all,” he admits. “I think back in the day, we just weren’t eating any fucking food! We were committing more to the rock’n’roll clichés because we were more anxious about the rise of the band and how to deal with that. I’ve got thick skin now. I didn’t in the past and it takes a really long time to come to terms with the fact that there are people that know who you are and who you have never met, and they all have an opinion on you. I’m not even saying that I’ve ever experienced a wave of negativity in that regard, but just the knowledge that your name is known among people you don’t know; it’s a very anxiety-inducing thing in the beginning. I’m a bit more okay with the whole thing now, I think.”
All of this combined gave the band the stamina they needed to take ‘Romance’ on tour and show the world exactly what they could do with their newfound sonic freedom. The album was a huge step outside of what many viewed the band as being, reframing them in futuristic neon and Day-Glo excess. At times, even brash in both its aesthetic and delivery, it seemed like a sink-or-swim moment for a band which had no urgent need to throw themselves into uncharted waters. In hindsight though, it was a move which saw them grow massively in their scope and depth and gave them a fresh lease of life on what Fontaines D.C. could be.
“We did what I think a lot of artists do,” says Grian. “They put themselves in the position where they make an album or any kind of art that they have a deep belief in, and then when it comes to publishing it, there’s a real feeling of ‘Why would I put myself through this?!’ Because it’s such an anxious process. But I’m really fucking proud that we stuck to our guns and saw it through because I think a lot of people – particularly younger people – have engaged with it to the point that they’re coming to the shows dressed ‘Romance-y’ or they’ve even got tattoos. There’s an identification among a lot of young fans with this record, which has been incredibly touching for us to see. I might sound disingenuous when I say that, but I mean it. When we get up on stage and see that level of commitment to the sense of the album and what it’s about, it makes it feel worthwhile very quickly.
“My other half helped me to stop looking back so much,” he continues. “I had a lot of retro influences for the first few years of the band, and she modernised me over time. She opened me up to contemporary and futuristic sounds and aesthetics at a similar time that the rest of the band were getting into the same thing. It just feels like we can pick and choose from a broader palette now – but it still has to say something, you know?”
“The reinvention was incredibly fucking fun to do”
Not that finding something to say has ever been an issue for Fontaines D.C., with the band having a work rate which makes most acts look like they’re slacking off. The longest they’ve ever spent between albums is just under two years between third album ‘Skinty Fia’ and ‘Romance’. That’s deceiving, though, because Grian snuck in a solo album during that time, seemingly finding it impossible – or at least deeply unpalatable – to stop creating music. Again and again, he’s underlined the point that songwriting is a release valve, simultaneously allowing him to make sense of the world and get away from the pressures it creates. As much as no band would admit to making music just for the sake of it, it really does feel that if Fontaines ran out of inspiration, there wouldn’t be another project until they found it again.
“I have a relationship with the songwriting process that has remained quite clean and unencumbered by writer’s block,” says Grian. “It’s never felt like a taxing process and has actually been an energising feature in my life. When we put out ‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’, one of the lads from Shame said to me, ‘Fucking hell man, don’t you ever sleep?’” Grian laughs at the memory. “But I don’t know, it’s the one part of it all that’s never seemed like a job. It feels like a break or a holiday. It’s nourishing and I go to it to be recharged, in a way.
“Where that’s different now is that we’ve built a complete world with ‘Romance’ in many senses, and I think it’s a little bit stickier to step out of it because of that; there’s more of a holistic commitment to it. I’m finding it a bit more difficult to switch it off and think about what’s next. I’m putting more pressure on myself this time around, because I’m really, really proud of the last record.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get this comfortable with the pressures and the huge response we were getting, particularly as somebody who grew up in a community where celebrating yourself wasn’t the norm and wasn’t encouraged. So to accept the celebration of something that you’ve written and performed on a nightly basis is a difficult thing to wrap your head around for a while, but you need to shake it off at some point for the sake of the development of the music. Otherwise, you’re kept in this box of trying to be cool, and I’ve long found that uninteresting, when a band’s fourth album is as fucking self-neuteringly cool as their first. I think you need to learn a sense of humility in order to develop.”
“There’s a lot to fight for back home, and I feel like I’m on the cusp of moving back”
Working out how to be comfortable with success while firmly in the public spotlight is a tough ask. If ‘Romance’ is the result of that journey, it’s a struggle worth dealing with. Rightly lauded when it came out, the recent release of the deluxe version has shown that there were plenty of great tracks which didn’t even make it onto the initial album. The additions, two brand new (‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’ and ‘Before You I Just Forget’) and one a reinterpretation of ‘Starburster’ so drastic it feels just as novel, fit seamlessly into the fabric of the album. In no small part, that’s because they very nearly were on the album.
“We recorded [the two new tracks] in the same period that we did the rest of the album, with the intention of including them, to be honest,” he explains. “When we made our individual lists of what we reckoned should be on the album, one or both of them were on most people’s lists, but through discussion, we decided to take them off. I remember specifically with ‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’, we felt it would tip the balance of the album towards the sound you can hear on ‘Favourite’, while ‘Before You I Just Forget’ occupies a similar space to ‘Sundowner’, for me. We just didn’t want to tip the balance too much in any one direction, but because we wrote them as part of the sessions for ‘Romance’, it made a lot of sense to put them out now. I’m as proud of those songs as I am of any of the other songs from this cycle, so I’m glad they’re out there.
“With [‘Starburster / In Heaven’], I’ve always wanted to cover that song, but Pixies have this incredible full band version already, so I thought about maybe bringing it lower with that growly piano sound, and then started jamming ‘Starburster’ over it. I think there’s something really special about both of those songs coming together, and I also think Deego’s vocal on it is just fucking amazing. He’s got this great voice, and he uses it so strangely – it’s like a dystopian Brian Wilson.”
More than anything else, ‘Starburster / In Heaven’ is proof that Fontaines D.C. can still surprise fans with a left turn. Even presented within the same palette as the rest of ‘Romance’, a slowed-down, drawn-out mash-up of David Lynch and The Beach Boys probably isn’t what most people would have had on their bingo cards. That it flips ‘Starburster’ on its head and draws new meanings from a song which has been picked over relentlessly since its release as lead single for the album is more impressive still. Not that Grian or the rest of the band are putting their feet up now that this era is coming to a close.
“When we announced that Belfast show and it sold really quickly,” says Grian. “The best way for me to process that is to start writing the next album – it’s good for creativity, in this bizarre way. But the question for me is around the scope of the reinvention that we did on the last record. I don’t know if I’m ready yet to answer whether we need to, or should do, the same again. I know that it was incredibly fucking fun to do, but it feels like there’s a little bit of electricity left over from the last record for me. I feel like surfing that wave a little bit more in a few senses. I don’t think we’re going to be coming out with a banjo rock album next, put it that way!
“The majority of what I’m surrounded by in the way of inspiration right now is just the life experience of being on the road again, too. I don’t think I’ve ever found America to be as charged as it is at the moment. There are pockets, bars and conversation between two people, where things lose that charge, and it suddenly becomes very peaceful. Those things make it all feel very accentuated here. Whether that translates into material for the future, I don’t know, but it’s what I’m absorbing right now.”
It’s the same attitude which has driven the band for their entire existence – always looking forwards, absorbing new experiences and constantly working to incorporate them in some way. Playing it safe has never been their strong suit, but the feeling of constantly being off-balance when they announce something new is part of what makes them great to so many fans. On the flipside, just like people watching Arctic Monkeys’ 2023 Glastonbury set and demanding to know why they aren’t playing ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’, there are always some early followers of a band who feel short-changed by the evolution that’s necessary for any creative endeavour.
“It feels to me like the pressure to be the people we were when we were 22 has gone, to some extent,” says Grian, carefully considering each word. “I would also just disagree if somebody told me that our first album was our best. I understand its strong points and I know we’ve lost a certain kind of energy that it had, but we’ve replaced it with a different one. I would disagree with those people, but I’m happy in my disagreement; I’m comfortable in it.
“When we perform those songs live, I can see the young person that I was. I can hear him in the lyrics, and I feel a compassion for him – for me. I can hear myself cutting my teeth, and I find it very endearing, to be honest. I don’t feel alienated from him, but I’m just very energised by what we’re doing now. These things come back around, though; one day, I’ll be singing songs from ‘Romance’ and feeling that same nostalgia, that same sense of endearment. They won’t always represent who I am in any given moment.”
Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and there’s a sense throughout our chat that Grian is wrestling with being caught between two worlds. The futuristic, stadium-sized songs of ‘Romance’ perfectly fit the huge venues and international tours that have become the norm for the band. Likewise, the pride in the band’s progression is palpable whenever Grian talks about it. But along with that comes a disconnect and a rootlessness, which can be hard to avoid. When the new album came out, Grian spoke about making a proper home with his girlfriend in North London, rather than bouncing between temporary places and living out of a suitcase. Now, he’s reflecting on what home means, and whether it can ever be something he finds outside of Ireland.
“I went back to Dublin recently,” he says. “And you’re really looking under the rug. It’s messy emotionally to go back; there’s an awful lot of pain associated with those streets for me. I don’t even mean that in a serious way, but more in the sense that I was once really happy there, and I felt I had to leave, for one reason or another. A lot of ghosts, but also quite an inspiring place to go back to. It makes me feel drenched with emotion, and that’s as good a place to write from as any. It’s important to explore other places, but I’m loathe to write an ‘American album’. I don’t want to sing about my favourite part of America, because it would feel like such a blatant attempt to make it over there.
“My attachment to Ireland has come back in a big way over the last few weeks. My faith in the country has grown in terms of Palestine and Ireland’s unwavering position on the situation there, which has been a huge source of pride for me. Things aren’t necessarily great there either, but the massive political energy that we’ve witnessed in Ireland has overjoyed me. There’s a lot to fight for back home, and I feel like I’m on the cusp of moving back. I’ve barely spoken about it with anyone, but its pull on me is getting stronger again. I couldn’t possibly say what the next album is going to look like, but I think it’s likely that Ireland will have a significant role to play, in one way or another.” ■
Taken from the July 2025 issue of Dork. Fontaines D.C.’s album ‘ROMANCE (Deluxe Edition)’ is out now. They play Finsbury Park, London on 5th July.
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