Fontaines D.C. Live in Brooklyn: Backstage and in the Crowd

A few weeks ago, Fontaines D.C. dropped “Starburster,” the uninhibited lead single off of their recently announced fourth album, Romance, out August 23. In anticipation of the upcoming album cycle, the Irish post-punk band spontaneously announced a one-off show at Warsaw in Brooklyn, and tickets sold out in mere minutes. When the day of the show came, a line of Fontaines devotees wrapped around the block of the Greenpoint venue on an 85-degree May evening, buzzing with feverish excitement.

The band themselves were feeling it, too. Over the last years, they’ve amassed a global diehard fanbase, a level of success they hadn’t imagined for themselves. “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to travel the world and play music,” says bassist Conor “Deego” Deegan. “I think we got quite used to people coming up to us in Dublin by now. But having people coming up to us in New York on the street is really bizarre. Quite shocking, but quite amazing really, to even be able to sell out a gig here.” 

At the show, they performed “Starburster” live for the first time. The rest of the 17-song setlist drew on Fontaines D.C.’s growing catalog, with songs from 2022’s Skinty Fia and 2019’s Dogrel zapping the crowd with adrenaline and starting several mosh pits. It felt like every attendee was thrilled to be in that room, proof of the air of communal joy that Fontaines foster. (Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner was among those spotted there.)

The Romance era comes with a stylistic shift for Fontaines D.C. – in terms of personal style, sure, but in content and approach, too. “After seeing yourself represented in publications and reading your own words for a long time, you feel a sense of inertia that I kind of got frustrated with — the sort of unchanging nature of how I was coming across,” says Chatten. “I think changing all angles and aspects of what we do was imperative to make sure that we felt like we were taking a genuine step in a different direction.”

“It’s kind of funny, it’s almost like muscle memory, but for the way we were,” Deegan adds. “Your hands go to the same chords all the time after a while. We were going to the same outfits, and we were going to the same ways of being, and talking, and interviews. I think we really tried to make a conscious break with all of that to stay sincere.”

Words by Leah Lu
Photos by Sacha Lecca and Griffin Lotz