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INTERVIEW
THE LIKES OF FONTAINES D.C.
about certain things [on the album] that people find vaguely interesting,” says Deego, “but then everyone starts repeating it. It’s good that people have something to say about us, for sure, but the whole ‘lads that like writing music and reading books of poetry’ got blown out of all proportion.” “It isn’t really extraordinary that we read,” deadpans Curley. The discourse, too, about Dogrel’s stimuli, its illuminating range of characters, its vernacular and its vital, oral sketches of “Dublin in the rain” has been chewed over ad infinitum and ceremoniously spat out, says O’Connell. The vibe we sense is that if one more question is asked about it, they’ll answer politely while simultaneously stifling a big fat yawn. “Months have passed,” O’Connell continues, “and, while the album isn’t by any means dead, if anyone wants to know what it is about then they’ll just have to listen to it and find out.” This is only right and proper. Onwards is the uninhibited battle cry for this most articulate of bands and so, for most of the summer – with some festival shows as buffers – they will be sequestered in Dublin
writing new songs. Unusually for any music act with such a multi-textured debut album, there is no impression whatsoever that they will stick to any given pattern. Anything and everything is up for grabs. “You have to call it,” says O’Connell, revealing a brusque, dogmatic frame of mind. “Do you want to write an album that you know people will like because they’ve liked previous songs of yours that are written in a certain fashion? Or do you want an album comprising songs we just continue to write – different-sounding songs, perhaps?” The question is pointedly rhetorical. “We know that the next album can be whatever we want it to be,” O’Connell concludes, “and that’s the very best position we can be in as artists.” Why so? The game/set/match reply: “Because no one expects the next album to be anything other than us as a band.” Dogrel is out now. The band are touring across Europe, North America and Canada all year, and on August 2, play Ireland’s All Together Now festival. fontainesband.com
MUSIC Deego: “I always come back to Bob Dylan’s 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited. I keep finding something new in it. It’s weird because, when I was younger, I used to really like the lyrics and thought for years that was the main aspect to it but, as I get older, I’m enjoying more the energy of the music. That sounds a bit counterintuitive, yet it shows that as art stays the same, personal perspectives can change.” BOOKS O’Connell: “Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet and playwright. He died in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, aged only 38. The book is amazing – it was written from the perspective of a guy from Spain who visited NYC, which Lorca did in 1929. It’s very similar to beat poetry, so it was incredibly ahead of its time and was a major influence on Leonard Cohen.”
CARA WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE MASONRY (ICONIC OFFICES), THOMAS STREET, DUBLIN 8.
MOVIES Curley: “It has to be Dead Man’s Shoes, directed by Shane Meadows. It’s from 2004 and stars Paddy Considine, who co-wrote it with Meadows. It’s a stripped back film about the bond between two brothers, one of which is ex-British Army, the other who is intellectually challenged. My older brother showed the movie to me years ago and from that moment on it has meant a lot.”