Fontaines DC - Skinty Fia - New Album and Tour

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Mon 07 Nov 2022 - Wed 07 Dec 2022

Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia - New Album and Tour

The new album from Fontaines D.C. is one of those gems which rewards repeated listening. The band are also giving fans the chance to hear the songs live in a tour that takes them from Montreal to Belfast.



Skinty Fia, the band's third album, is full of lyrical jewels delivered in Grian Chatten's clear but undiluted Dublin accent.

He has that genius which the best lyricists have of hooking you into a situation and giving you just enough detail to make you want to return again. These songs leave space for the listener to make sense of the story and find their own personal resonance with it.

The words are off-set by a dynamic musical setting played by Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Tom Coll, Conor Deegan III. It becomes discordant and cacophonous at times but without draining the melody from the songs.

There are some good jokes too. The best being in the album's title track: "She says 'I don't agree with nothing" I say "Neither do I'."

Interviewing the band at a pub near Maida Vale, BBC Radio 6's Steve Lamacq described the compelling tension of the tracks as 'beauty and grit.' Skinty Fia is apparently an Irish phrase which means 'the damnation of the deer.' But it is also a substitute swear word.

Many of the songs are a mixture of lament and protest. In I Love You, the romantic declarations are counterbalanced by references to 'selling genocide' and 'I sucked the ring off every hand.'

It's telling that one of the tracks is titled Roman Holiday – a phrase which refers to enjoyment derived from others' suffering.

Chatten told Lamacq that love songs were his "new world frame of reference" resulting from a change in his his personal life but that there is "an inherent darkness that the band reverts to."

Here is a subjective pick of the album's three outstanding tracks:

In ár gCroíthe go deo

Skinty Fia opens with voices singing in plainchant and a pulsing repeated note in the background. When Grian Chatten joins in he tells us 'Gone is the day, gone is the night' Is this a warning or rage against the dying of the light? The track builds towards a crescendo of crashing drums, while the sacred voices continue their repeated line, as if oblivious to other sounds.

The title means 'In Our Hearts Forever.' The song was inspired by a story in The Irish Post about a woman at odds with the Church Of England regarding an inscription she wanted included on her gravestone. She was told that the Irish language is "provocative."

Jackie Down the Line

With its catchy chorus, this track was an obvious choice for a single. But it also deeply menacing with a foreboding bassline and references to 'Sally's boneyard' and 'handsome mourners crying' and its refrain of 'I don't think we'd rhyme, I will wear you down in time.'

I'd thought it was about an internet troll, but Chatten told Steve Lamacq that it is concerned with the "inescapability of living like your family." As an Irish band now based in London, he also said it is about "a cultural identity surviving in another place."

D.C. in the band's name, stands for Dublin City. Bassist Conor Deegan III observed: "There's a sentimentality of sitting in an Irish pub in London, surrounded by other Irish people and it's 4am, the lights are going off and half-remembering these old songs. On the other hand, there's something dark and a little bit bleak about that."



The Couple Across the Way

This song is a break from guitar and drums and features instead a melancholy sounding accordion. It evokes pictures of a rented room in Paris with the narrator telling a short story to an empty street.

It's about a relationship that has gone past its honeymoon period. 'You use voices on the phone that were once spent on me.'

He wonders if the couple moving in with 'passion in its prime' and wonders forlornly: 'Maybe they look through to us and hope that's them in time."



Tour dates UK and Ireland

07/11/2022
BONUS ARENA, HULL

08/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, LEEDS

09/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, LEEDS

11/11/2022
O2 VICTORIA WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER

12/11/2022
O2 VICTORIA WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER

15/11/2022
GLOBE, STOCKTON

17/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, GLASGOW

18/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, GLASGOW

19/11/2022
SWANSEA ARENA, SWANSEA

21/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, BIRMINGHAM

24/11/2022
EVENTIM APOLLO, LONDON

25/11/2022
EVENTIM APOLLO, LONDON

26/11/2022
EVENTIM APOLLO, LONDON

28/11/2022
O2 ACADEMY, EDINBURGH

30/11/2022
VICAR STREET, DUBLIN

01/12/2022
VICAR STREET, DUBLIN
SOLD OUT

02/12/2022
VICAR STREET, DUBLIN
SOLD OUT

03/12/2022
LEISURELAND, GALWAY
SOLD OUT

05/12/2022
LIVE AT THE BIG TOP, LIMERICK

06/12/2022
MILLENNIUM FORUM, DERRY

07/12/2022
ULSTER HALL, BELFAST

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!date 07/11/2022 -- 07/12/2022
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