Fontaines DC have been a lot of different things over the course of their brief career. Gobby upstarts, loudly proclaiming their own greatness – “my childhood was small, but I’m gonna be big,” crowed Grian Chatten on the opening track of the band’s 2019 debut – and surly self-doubters, prickly distrustful of their own success and acclaim: “Pigeonholed, coo’ed to death,” complained Chatten on its 2020 successor A Hero’s Death. The sound of young Dublin, decrying the limitations of their home city – “if you’re a rock star, pornstar, superstar – doesn’t matter what you are / get a good car, get out of here” – and Irish emigres uneasily relocated to Britain: “London’s fine, did my time / threshed the truth out the lie.” A band who felt like a reset button on an increasingly moribund alt-rock scene, barging to the head of a fresh wave of artists with noisy guitars and sprechgesang vocals, and refuseniks, declining to be part of anything: “I don’t belong to anyone, I don’t want to belong to anyone.”
