It was hard to work out who was the more star-struck on Wednesday's Liveline: Joe Duffy or Fontaines D.C. frontman Graham Chatten, who declared himself a long-time fan of Liveline and said being on the show was "a dream come true". Joe invited the band to join him on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve, so people could find out just how "brilliant" they were.
"Brilliant", or some variation on it, is what the music press is saying about the post-punk band's second album A Hero's Death. Released on July 31st, it has just knocked Taylor Swift off the top spot in the UK mid-week album charts. Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten and Carlos O'Connell spoke to Joe on Liveline about writing their second album on the road and how Dublin and its iconic writers have inspired them.
BIMM College in Dublin's Liberties brought Grian Chatten, Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll together. Carlos tells Joe that the chemistry was instant:
"So we all came from all our different homes all over Ireland and myself, I was in Spain. I think it was pretty much the first day that we all met. I mean we just fell in love with each other. And then from there we did a lot together, we played a lot of music together, we fell in love with poetry together, we fell in love with Yeats and Joyce. And then, we focussed a lot on writing poetry for a while and eventually that all turned into rock and roll."
Grian Chatten's parents met in Germany when they were both touring in Pogues cover bands. Grian cites Shane McGowan as an important creative influence. Dublin and its writers are also inspire the band, he says, with the title A Hero's Death coming from a line in Brendan Behan's play The Hostage:
"You'd have to be quite ignorant of Dublin to not to be inspired by it some way. It's a very inspiring place. It's haunted by incredible writers. Everywhere you go there's statues and monuments to Behan and Joyce and Kavanagh. I found it very inspiring. We all sort of imagined that we were living in a different time in Ireland. We had a very romantic vision of it, you know. We walked down Raglan Road, singing 'Raglan Road' and all that kind of stuff."
Success has piled upon success, with the first album Dogrel attracting awards and critical acclaim. An intense period of touring followed, which Carlos says was "mad”, but they made the most of it:
"We saw a lot of the world and at the same time we didn't see any of it. It was a year that took so much of our time and we realised that we needed to write more music. So any little bit of free time that we had, we spent it together writing music."
A Hero's Death was put together last summer, says Carlos, when they took advantage of any gaps in their heavy schedule:
"That's how we wrote this other album. We wrote it last summer, in between festivals. We probably had about 5 festivals every week and we had two days to work on tunes."
With Covid, Fontaines D.C. won't be performing live in front of an audience any time soon. Grian tells Joe it's disappointing, but there are upsides:
"Even though it’s a great shame for us to not to be playing Glastonbury again and the likes, it is in some way beneficial for our creativity, particularly, you know, to have our feet on the ground."
You can hear Joe Duffy's full interview with Grian Chatten and Carlos O'Connell here.
Listen back to a full hour of music on @2FM selected by Fontaines D.C. on The Alternative with Graham Smyth here.
A Hero's Death by Fontaines D.C. is released on Partisan Records and is available wherever you get your music.
Ruth Kennedy