Fontaines D.C.

‘Skinty Fia,’ the title of the much-anticipated third album by Fontaines D.C, translates to English as “the damnation of the deer.”

“And the Irish giant deer is an extinct species,” explains bassist Conor Deegan III aka Deego. “But ‘skinty fia’ is also used as an expletive, in the way you’d say ‘For f*ck’s sake’ if you bang your arm on a table or whatever. We just thought there was something really beautiful about that, because it’s really representative of Irish culture in some sense. We were interested in the idea of something really precious or sentimental and attached to family, but also something that’s been taken away from us. Which doesn’t mean we can’t cherish it.”

Indeed, and the band’s thoughts on Irish identity are crucial to ‘Skinty Fia’ as they have relocated from their home country. 2019’s ‘Dogrel’ was mostly set in Dublin and was littered with snapshots of the city’s characters, like the cabbie in “Boys In The Better Land” who “spits out ‘Brits out!’, only smokes Carroll’s”. By contrast, their markedly different 2020 follow-up ‘A Hero’s Death’ was largely written on tour and documented the dislocation and disconnection the band felt from Ireland as they had new adventures around the globe. This time, they’re addressing their Irishness from afar as they recreate new lives for themselves elsewhere and try to resolve the need to broaden their horizons with the affection they still clearly feel for the land and people they’ve left behind. “It’s about being Irish and expressing that in London, and what can you take with you that makes you feel connected to home,” Deego explains. “We really tried to hold on to the things that made us Irish. 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.”