DUBLIN band Fontaines D.C. will release their highly anticipated third album Skinty Fia on Friday April 22.
The band have announced details of an Ireland/UK tour featuring a show Live at the Big Top, Limerick Milk Market presented by Seoda Shows on Monday December 5. Tickets on sale from March 30 at www.dolans.ie.
Anybody lucky enough to witness Fontaines D.C. play Dolans Warehouse for promoter Seoda Shows Birthday Party in 2019 will know these are the hottest tickets in town.
Recent single ‘I Love You,’ was met with international acclaim and joined the first single, ‘Jackie Down The Line,’ in building anticipation for the band’s third album.
The band – who just took home the trophy for “Best Band In The World” at the 2022 BandLab NME Awards – have released the album’s titular track ‘Skinty Fia,’ accompanied by a music video.
Skinty Fia is an Irish phrase that translates to English as “the damnation of the deer” and the album’s cover art features a deer, plucked from its natural habitat and deposited in the hallway of a home, illuminated by an artificial red glow. The phrase, which is used to display disappointment or annoyance, resonated with front man Grian Chatten as the correct expression of his feelings towards the “mutation” of Irish culture abroad.
The song explores the idea through the lens of a relationship doomed by paranoia, alcohol, and drugs. The accompanying music video, directed by Hugh Mulhern, captures the tension in the song, as Grian manoeuvres his way through a bustling party crowd, seemingly unnoticed, in what turns out to be a disorientating, surrealist dreamscape.
‘Skinty Fia’ operates as the album’s anchor, setting the tone for the rest of the record, as the band explores new musical terrain while lyrically they grapple with a need to broaden their horizons following a recent relocation to London.
There are echoes of Dogrel’s rumbustious rock ’n’ roll, and the bleaker atmospheres of A Hero’s Death, but Skinty Fia, the third in the triumvirate, is much more expansive and cinematic. Fontaines D.C. is a band in a state of constant evolution and this time the result is an album of shifting moods, startling insight, maturity, and considerable emotional wallop.
