On the cover of the third Fontaines DC album is an Irish giant deer standing on the ground floor of a house – an extinct creature in a place where it isn’t supposed to be. The title is an old Gaelic semi-swear word, occasionally uttered by drummer Tom Coll’s exclusively Irish-speaking great aunt, that roughly translates as “the damnation of the deer”.
That feeling of being displaced and possibly cursed is something that frontman Grian Chatten has been wrestling with while driving his band and his life forward at whiplash-inducing pace. Exactly three years ago the quintet were based in Dublin and releasing a debut album, Dogrel, of fast, anguished punk rock. Now they’re all living in London, they’re Grammy, Brit and Mercury nominees, they have three nights at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo booked and the NME Awards just crowned them Best Band in the World. Chatten in particular, despite having been born in Cumbria, is conflicted about settling in a country with a long history of making his kind feel unwelcome. He’s also worried that he’s abandoned his chief source of inspiration. The “DC” stands for “Dublin City” and there’s reference to the Irish capital’s James Joyce connections in the funereal new song Bloomsday.
