Irish band Fontaines D.C. have been globetrotting with their fourth album, Romance, an epic progression of their first three post-punk offerings, though their poetic slant remains. Their eight-stop tour of Oceania included half a dozen major cities, and a headline at Golden Plains festival, sandwiched between two sellout shows at Melbourne’s Palace Foreshore. Given an hour to interview and photograph the band, we decided to make the most of our sacred time by posing questions gathered from our friends and contributors. At a hotel in Melbourne city, Rachel and ultimate fanboy Mark Bo Chu sat down with Connor Deegan (a.k.a. Deego) with a sheet of questions from Anna Stewart, Ryan Delaney, Yazz Jensen, Oriana De Luca and Sophie Martin. Topics ranged from the band’s influences, Irish politics, Lulu Lin’s album art, the band’s soundtrack appearance in Andrea Arnold’s 2024 film Bird, and their relationship with the word “punk.” As it turns out, it’s not something they think much about anymore.

MARK BO CHU Fontaines D.C. stands for Fontaines Dublin City. When people see Irish people being patriotic, it’s often heartwarming, though that isn’t the case for many other countries.

CONNOR DEEGAN I suppose there’s a different tonality to certain kinds of nationalism. Like, a rebellion against the oppressive force as opposed to, you know, pride in an oppressive force, right? It’s different. Irish history, and all.

MBC Is the oppression related to colonisation?

CD Yes, colonisation from the British and colonisation from the Catholic Church. It’s a weird thing where Catholic religion was forced on us by the colonisers, but now it’s become our identity against the Protestant religion of England, even though they’re the ones who introduced Catholicism to us in the first place.

MBC We’re a minute in and talking about quite high-minded topics.

CD I mean, not really.

MBC As in, this isn’t high-minded?

CD I don’t think so. It’s facts of life.

ANNA STEWART What aspects of identity do you intend to explore lyrically? Is there a distinction between lyrics and poetry?

CD It depends on the poem and it depends on the lyric. You can have poetry that’s supposed to be read by the eye and not aloud. The way E. E. Cummings breaks down structure is very much poetry and not lyrics. He’ll use brackets around (I carry it in my heart) or whatever. But then someone like Ogden Nash has got a really strong rhyming scheme.

MBC So, are all lyrics audio poems?

CD Pretty much every lyricist in the world would say that their lyrics are poems. But I wouldn’t agree. Musicians carry a lot of meaning in their performance, you know, like an actor does with a bad script.

MBC So the context of the lyrics changes the meaning.

CD We have a song, ‘A Hero’s Death,’ which has really great lyrics, but if that was not performed with fairly dark music, then I don’t think it would have the same impact. If it was made with a floral string arrangement or something, it would be really saccharine. But the music can also give the lyrics a level of uncertainty where you don’t know whether the narrator is being genuine or not.

ORIANA DE LUCA How do your lyrics come about? Is it after an experience you have? Or does the melody come firsthand then someone fills it in? What’s the creative process. 

CD In ‘A Hero’s Death’, the lyrics came first. We were listening to our first record in Dublin on some big speakers and Grian was walking around thinking, how am I gonna follow this up? So he decided to start writing the second record.

MBC Do you think Grian knew to pair the words with dark musical material?

CD I’m not sure. A big part of being in a band is learning to complement each other’s work.

MBC So the lyric might start in a vacuum and get handballed to someone else. That person then realises it with music.

CD It could be fully formed with an intention, or it could just be brought to the table. Like with the song ‘Nabokov,’ Tom and I were making a bridge for a different song, but the bridge was cooler than the song itself.

MBC That’s my favourite Fontaines D.C. song. In live versions, I noticed that different band members play spontaneously. Or Grian will change a lyric. Do you plan how much each player improvises?

CD We pick up our own influences and bring them into the music. Ultimately, we’re serving the songs. Having restraint is important, especially in our genre. At Golden Plains yesterday, PJ Harvey played. She had so much restraint. It was powerful and patient.

MBC Does everyone in the band believe in restraint?

CD We’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t work through trial and error. We worked with that process on the first three albums. For Romance, we decided to do away with it a bit. Throw everything against the wall and see what works. There’s a bit more outlandish stuff going on.

RACHEL WEINBERG What made you adopt a new approach? Did you want to show your audience another version of yourself? Or were you restless?

CD We had made three albums that had slowly formed us into a post-punk genre. We could have just made another album like that, and it would have cemented us as that band. That would be our career. We could’ve made music like that for nine albums, you know. But we realised that we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to mix things up, shake it up and take more risks. Try arrangements that we didn’t think we could do in the past. So we went for songs like ‘In The Modern World,’ and I’m really glad we did. It made the album much more colourful.

RYAN DELANEY You joined the stage with the Pogues last December in Dublin to celebrate 40 years of the band’s debut album Red Roses For Me. How was that experience and were the Pogues a big influence for the band?

CD Massive! Huge. Especially back in the day, when we started making our first record. Shane MacGowan is an amazing lyricist, a storyteller, in the context of such a drunken, bawdy group. He really teaches you how to look for beauty in things and how rewarding it can be when you find it.

RW Are you reading anything at the moment?

CD I just picked up Anna Karenina, but I keep losing it. I’ve just started again.

YAZZ JENSEN You’re all over my friends’ playlists. Who are some artists that are currently on yours? What are you listening to at the moment?

CD I'm listening to an old dub album at the moment by Ranking Ann. Songs like ‘Liberated Woman’ and ‘Love on a Mountain Top.’ I’ve been getting into jungle as well.

MBC Will those faster electronic elements ever seep into the band?

CD Yeah, I’d love them too. The guys have been getting into DJing as well. Like, drum and bass and techno.

MBC All-in, five-person, back-to-back sets?

CD Laughs. Nah, just a couple of the guys are into it. I don’t actually do it myself. It’s funny; they just got offered a DJ set in Ibiza. Which is a bit mad. But there you go.

YJ Your visuals make me nostalgic for a British neighbourhood stroll I’ve never had. Is there a specific music video from any artist that you keep revisiting for inspiration or that has had a lasting effect on you?

CD The nineties was an incredible time. I’m trying to remember the name of this video by Cibo Matto, a Japanese girl band. The music is really cool, and one of them is going forward and one of them is going back in time, and they’re walking towards each other, kind of. We also watch dark movies when we’re making albums. Like, did you ever see that film, Happiness?

MBC It’s awesome. By Todd Salondz.

CD Yep! Or even scary movies, I suppose, with ghosts. There’s something good for the music in watching scary movies.

MBC Is it part of the creative process?

CD Just something lads do when they’re staying in a place together. Sleepover vibes. It’s a tradition. We’ve been doing it for the last few albums.

SOPHIE MARTIN Last year you worked on Andrea Arnold’s film Bird. Can you tell us more about how you came to collaborate on the soundtrack?

CD We got an offer from that film to use our song. And then Carlos, he’s a bit cheeky, said, oh, can I have a part in the film? And they gave him a part as an extra.

MBC So was the song ‘Bug’ conceived with Bird in mind?

CD No, which is really bizarre because the main character is called Bug.

RW How do you integrate visual elements in your shows?

CD We use visuals as a way of expressing the themes of the music and taking the atmosphere to another level. We like to take a bit of a deep dive on different references and make a collection to see what works. We're opening up the live show, starting to work with some visual designers, levelling it up over in the UK. It’ll be interesting to bring that more cinematic component to the live shows.

MBC What drew you to Lulu Lin, who made the cover art of your album Romance?

CD We were looking for artwork for ages, and, initially, we were gonna use a painting by our friend George Rouy. You know his work?

MBC Yeah. Abstracted bodies, fleshy tones.

CD Exactly. Some of his earlier work is more pink and dark. It was really cool but he didn’t want to promote his older work. Then Carlos started messing around on AI. Making double pig heads. Stuff like that. It was February and we had to deliver by March. And then, on Valentine’s Day, Lulu Lin released that heart painting, and we were like, oh, fuck! Actually, I got a grill made of it.

MBC Post punk obviously derives from punk, and punk is an identity. Do you ever wake up and think, I am a punk?

CD Punk is about DIY and liberal values. But it’s become really gentrified. It’s become an aesthetic choice. Rich kids dress up in expensive clothes to look punk. You see it so much in London. Enfants Deprimes, or whatever the fuck the brand is called, is so stupid. It’s about depressed rich children. It’s made to look like punk clothing. When I was 14 or whatever, I used to think of myself as punk, then I forgot about it because I got so used to being around people who have the same sensibility. Touring for years with bands in the UK, like Shame or Idles, you all kind of forget about your perspective. I started dating a musician recently and they work in a different genre. Getting into that world and being over there, then coming back to mine, I can see the differences in perspective more. I think ‘punk’ is only useful to me now as an approach to music.

photographer HARRY BURMEISTER
creative producer RACHEL WEINBERG
stylist JEMIMA MIKULIC
dop and editor GABE HANVEY
1^st photography assistant RILEY HART
2^nd photography assistant NICK TIMSON
grooming MEG MCCONVILLE
colourist SAM MCCARTHY

special thanks DAISY SIDDALL