Music
Plus One
The 11 best Fontaines D.C. songs
With a Finsbury Park takeover just announced for next summer and a major UK tour about to kick off, it's time to rank the best Fontaines tracks
It’s hard to remember a band who’ve managed to capture the attention of so many in such a short time.
Yet nothing about Fontaines D.C., who’ve only been a going concern since 2017, points towards the mainstream. Their style is uncompromising, their production is raw and sometimes ragged, their lyrical bite is intensely poetic and disparate, and they give no creed or time to any formula. But their sound is utterly compelling, their songs demand repeated listens, and their live shows are like no-one else’s. So perhaps it’s no surprise that they’ve found themselves on the biggest of stages just four albums in.
Their fourth LP, Romance, is coming this week, and they’ve got a giant European tour at the end of November to showcase it on the biggest of arenas across the continent.
To celebrate their return, we thought we’d look back over their short, but prolific career to date and pick out their 11 finest efforts.
11. ‘Nabokov’
(Skinty Fia, 2022)
The closer on the band’s hugely acclaimed LP Skinty Fia, ‘Nabokov’ is a bruising, meandering and devastating piece of work. Unashamedly poetic, lyrically brutal and captivating. It has a profound unease to it, which is not the feeling many bands would choose to deliver as their final word on an album. But then Fontaines D.C aren’t like anyone else.
10. ‘Liberty Belle’
(Dogrel, 2019)
Fontaines D.C’s 2019 debut Dogrel announced them instantly as a band apart from those around them, shunning studio magic and slick production in favour of something more powerful. That’s never more true than on ‘Liberty Belle’, which is minimal in the extreme in its production and instrumentation, with mostly nothing more than a rattling drum rhythm and Grian Chatten’s words over the top. It does build up to an almighty riot of noise, too.
9. ‘Boys In The Better Land’
(Dogrel, 2019)
One of the band’s more upbeat cuts, ‘Boys In The Better Land’ has a slight Libertines-y feel to it, with the members’ love of The Fall and their esoteric take on rock and roll coming through. It rollicks and rattles along to a frenzy eventually, but does joyously.
8. ‘Televised Mind’
(A Hero’s Death, 2020)
Fontaines D.C are often called a post-punk band, putting them alongside the likes of The Fall and Joy Division in that genre’s history. Mostly, it’s a misnomer and there’s far, far more going on, but here it’s a worthy description. This is discordant, aggressive and an absolutely barnstormer.
7. ‘Jackie Down The Line’
(Skinty Fia, 2022)
It seems unlikely that Fontaines D.C will ever produce anything that most listeners would recognise as a ballad, but perhaps ‘Jackie Down The Line’ is as close as they will ever get. This is a languid, tortured marvel.
6. ‘Big’
(Dogrel, 2019)
The opening blast from Dogrel, setting out in under two minutes everything Fontaines D.C. would come to represent. Poetic, intensely lyrical, intensely raw, powerful and confident. It is the ultimate mission statement.
5. ‘Roman Holiday’
(Skinty Fia, 2022)
This is as close as the band get to psychedelia, with Chatten’s soaring vocals sitting above a discordant web of guitars, which twist and turn and cavort into it meshes into something vital and anthemic.
4. ‘I Love You’
(Skinty Fia, 2022)
Lots of Fontaines D.C’s best moments are short, sharp shocks. Blasts of energy and clattering instrumentation, but they can brood and meander with the best of them too.
3. ‘Starburster’
(Romance, 2024)
Only released a few weeks ago, the cavernous grooves of ‘Starburster’ made it an instant classic. Moody, intricate, punchy and with a supremely catchier chorus, a glorious thing.
2. ‘Bloomsday’
(Skinty Fia, 2022)
The highlight of Skinty Fa, ‘Bloomsday’ is a strange, sinister sprawling thing, but utterly captivating. Typically raw and unpolished in its production, it sees Chatten channelling his inner Nick Cave to loom large over a squealing wall of guitars and a doom-laden bass groove. One that demands listening again and again and again.
1. ‘I Don’t Belong’
(A Hero’s Death, 2020)
If there is one song in the Dublin fivesome’s already fearsome back catalogue that sums up all that Fontaines D.C. are, it’s ‘I Don’t Belong’. It’s without fuss in its production and instrumentation, with the guitars, bass and drums all allowed to breathe and drift off, it makes no apology or effort to force Chatten’s vocals into a more straightforward structure, and it takes its sweet time building up. It’s not easily understood on one listen, but you’ll soon find that you can’t stop listening to it.
Fontaines D.C. play Reading & Leeds festival this August bank holiday, before starting their UK tour in November. The band have also announced a special Finsbury Park performance for 5 July 2025, with support from Amyl And The Sniffers and Kneecap.
