It’s the humid crush of mid August, a week before the release of Fontaines’ fourth album, Romance, and I’ve come to meet the band in Charleville-Mézières, a small town that sits between France’s Champagne region and the Belgian border. They’re in town for Le Cabaret Vert, a festival they first played back in 2018; three appearances here and as many albums later, they are now near the top of the bill.
This particular performance comes in the middle of a seismic wave that has carried the band from cult status—they’re your favorite artist’s favorite artist—to the cusp of something much bigger. After a slow-burn ascent (a Grammy nomination in 2021, a BRIT award in 2023), Fontaines are everywhere: in Andrea Arnold’s film Bird, released this month, in which Barry Keoghan sings their track “A Hero’s Death” menacingly; on Jimmy Fallon, launching “Starburster,” the first single for the album; at the cover shoot for this issue, at which Paul Mescal said Fontaines were all he was listening to right now. (“They get into your brain and never really leave,” Mescal told GQ.)
It feels like that success is cresting right at this very moment, as they make a straggled arrival on the riverbank in Charleville-Mézières, dressed in a riot of leopard print, neon sunglasses, and Adidas tracksuits. Coll and guitarist Carlos O’Connell first, then Chatten, bassist Conor Deegan III (“Deego,” always), and Curley bringing up the rear.
Fontaines’ ascent is all the more unlikely coming as it does at a time when the all-male guitar band seems like an endangered species. So far, not a single band has topped the Billboard Hot 100 this year. In our era of outsized pop personalities, earnest country boys, and culture-eating rap beefs, indie rock bands feel like relics from another decade. The few that have found relevance have done so by trying to break the mold of their predecessors (Boygenius) or by their wry, parodic approach (the 1975). Fontaines have thrived as something else entirely: a furious punk-rock outfit taking aim at society’s ills, via Chatten’s snarling shout-spoken vocals, ragged guitar chords, and the thunderclap of Coll’s driving drums.
Even as Fontaines are finally getting their flowers, they’re already in the midst of another rebellion. For the new album, Romance, the band went to war with the image of themselves, pushing a new, softer sound, one that aches with its frustrations and pain rather than yelling it in your face. At the same time, the band have undergone a radical makeover, eschewing their previous go-tos of cardigans, jeans, and leather jackets for outfits that include skirts and knee-high socks, as well as slicked hair in the style of Natural Born Killers.
