On a drizzling-yet-temperate evening in New Haven, CT, with the month of May somehow already halfway gone, Irish band Fontaines DC make their first-ever stop in the city at the storied College Street Music Hall. Since their debut proper in 2019 with the universally head-turning Dogrel (and even earlier, if you were paying attention), these firebrands have spun their youthful love of poetry into an immense career that includes some of the most compelling music out of that lovely collection of islands situated north of mainland Europe.
We’ve covered Fontaines here several times before at Music Madness, including their 2024 stop in Boston, at the head of the Romance album cycle. There’s no need to rehash the general commonalities between this set and that one – the album remains the band at their most evolved, their weirdest, emphasizing an impressive range of sounds and eccentric vocal feats. But things have moved forward for the band even since late last year, most notably with the release of the deluxe version of that album, including two entirely new songs and a profoundly-compelling rendition of another.
The tour has made ample and excellent use of the album cover’s color grading – first seen with the overwhelming greens that herald the title track opener, as singer Grian Chatten begins the song from backstage, eventually emerging with upward hand motions that suitably froth up the crowd. ‘Televised Mind’ soon makes use of the other prominent tones here, alternating between blue and magenta hues. Grian emerged with his trademark sunglasses, but they’ve gone missing somewhere by the time they arrive at ‘Roman Holiday’, where he visits each third of the stage in turn before settling back in the middle at the mic. ‘Sundowner’ sees him taking up the acoustic guitar, an overall rare occurrence, and the crowd does “the wave”, proving that the timeless waving of hands above heads truly does transcend any genre, no matter how niche or mass-market.
The audience gets treated to one of the newest songs in the band’s repertoire, ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’, which turns up as a B-side on the deluxe version of Romance. It plays as a sister composition to ‘Favourite’, nesting itself firmly as one of their more “approachable” (to borrow an Industry™ term) tunes – it’s hardly a walk in the park emotionally, but it does have a tone of hopefulness and resilience baked into it. Fontaines DC aren’t young-young anymore, to be sure – as a fellow child of the 90s I fear I can confidently damn them to that designation. But people of this age are certainly not old, and in a sense, being in one’s thirties at this moment, on a wave of well-earned success and creative growth… that has to be quite a ride. ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’ could be an older song finally released, or something they penned in their current era; the spirit of opportunity it invokes, in spite of the admission of how difficult it can be to convey one’s experiences to others, also a frequent earmark of youth, is the core resonant experience that makes this song stick.
Deviating from the live show for a moment, let’s look at the other new offerings from Romance’s Deluxe release. ‘Before You I Just Forget’ is much the opposite of ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’, leaning into another mood the band have become accustomed to cultivating – a darkly-jangling chorus sandwiches an almost-muttered verse, then a bridge that seems to call back to one of the band’s earlier B-sides (‘The Cuckoo is a-Calling’) and Radiohead in the same breath. But to be honest, it’s the last cut of Romance (Deluxe) that sticks with me – a version of ‘Starburster’ that slows down, strips itself back, and merges seamlessly with a composition written in part by the late David Lynch.
‘Starburster’ was the first single to be released from Romance, and turned my head and an innumerable number of others for how it took the tendencies the band courted on the title track of Skinty Fia and amped them up to eleven. It was a braggadocious, hip-hop influenced permutation of the band, a landmark in their career. But much to my surprise, the band, Chatten at its pinnacle with a piercing vocal, conjures something far more like ‘Romance’ (the track) in tone for this alternate version. There’s a subtle swirl of effects around it all, but at its core lie just Chatten and a piano, switching from ‘Starburster’ to ‘In Heaven’, also known as the ‘Lady in the Radiator Song’ from Lynch’s debut film, Eraserhead. While Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, and other collaborators ultimately cemented the director’s legacy as a musical figure as much as a filmic one, Lynch from the very beginning courted the ears as much as the eyes. It would stand on its own as an inspired hybrid-cover; but in the aftermath of Lynch’s death in January of 2025, it chills one’s heart all the more to hear the beauty of a modern composition married so meticulously to this inimitably-strange, lustrous gem of the past. Eraserhead certainly has some overt themes, most of all the anxieties of parenthood; but so much of the film and its imagery remain alluringly unknowable – to make something that can sit ably alongside that legacy is no small task.
Coming back at long last to Connecticut, one of the biggest surprises of the night is the appearance in the setlist of ‘Horseness is the Whatness’. Its title derived from Ulysses by James Joyce, a literary figure who has long stood tall in Fontaines DC canon – it’s a heartbreaking song, two verses, each of which builds up to a closing triplet that is somehow more emotionally bludgeoning than what has immediately preceded it. And the song has modern bearings, too: the narrator thought the Prime Mover of the world was Love, but it seems more and more it has to be “Choice” – the death of kindness in favor of individualism. “You choose or you exist.” I know almost nothing of Irish politics, but from an American perspective, this has always been, to some degree or another, our struggle, too: love for one’s fellow human, stacked against the individualism and opportunism we are encouraged to pursue from youth onward.
But speaking of Irish politics, the unfortunately-evergreen ‘I Love You’ makes an appearance as one of the band’s three songs in their encore. “This island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck in their jaws” has always been one of the most haunting lines Chatten has delivered, venomous and accusatory – and while it is a specific reference to tragedies in Ireland itself, the unfortunate reality is that it’s quite easy to imagine many other international players with an equal or greater degree of blood on their hands, growing even now. And because their music and performances remain in touch with all of this, Fontaines DC remain one of the most vital bands of our age on both a personal and political level. It takes great resolve, spirit, and creativity to do all that – should you be seeking a band with all those characteristics, look no further.
Photos and words by Collin Heroux
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