Fontaines D.C.’s meteoric rises continued last night when they made their US television debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, playing two songs from their debut album ‘Dogrel’.

https://youtu.be/46-xvQjgp3Q

https://youtu.be/rKQeDO4WqRc

William Blake once wrote that “that call’d body is a portion of the Soul discern’d by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.” Blake realised that through the stimulations of the world, we can reach the spirit. That reality is what we perceive. And the soul is how we perceive it.

As ancient tribes used physicality to reach the gods, Fontaines D.C. use rock n’ roll’s momentum and rhythms to dance the soul out of hiding. ‘Dogrel’ moves with the pace of a Kerouac novel – full of the joys and possibilities and experiences of life. The 21st century is full of pseudo-intellectual indie bands. Fontaines D.C. are not intellectual. They are intelligent, strong, funny, creative. A blast of joy in an uncertain world.

Big’s drums blow the record’s doors off. The bass riff ushers in Grian Chatten’s voice and the guitars rush beneath his thick Dublin accent like sonic whitewater. Chatten rolls his Rs like a Celtic Johnny Rotten. Snarling and spitting with a voice that could have come from no one or nowhere else. His lyrics hover between Flann O’Brien and Mark E. Smith – a sort of inscrutable Gaelic punk. “With a face like sin and a heart like a James Joyce novel,” he sings on Boys In The Better Land. He has drawn from a library’s worth of lexicons. Bringing together poetry and rock n’ roll in a way unlike any before. They meet in the hinterland between the written word, punk rock, and Ireland. Where they come together as a community of influences, transcending their limitations to create something new. A rock music for today.

Listen to ‘Dogrel’ below and read our review here.