All hail Fontaines D.C., leading contenders for the title of “greatest rock band of our generally great-rock-band-deprived historical moment.” In this month’s print edition of GQ, Olivia Ovenden meets up with the Dublin-bred quintet in France and finds them celebrating the then-impending release of their fourth album Romance—a collection of turbulent, hot-blooded, and achingly cool songs about anxiety attacks and end-times three-ways—in true great-rock-band fashion: by reading Rimbaud in the park, having a few beers, and insisting that the critics (who’ve long slotted the Fontaines in the nebulous category of “post-punk”) don’t know shite. Key data point indicating that the fivesome are, in a rock-and-roll sense, truly About That Life: “There is no moment,” Ovenden reports, “where someone is not either rolling or smoking a cigarette.”
You can read Ovenden’s feature right here. Romance dropped shortly after GQ‘s hang with the band, to rapturous reviews (many of which used the word “post-punk”—the struggle continues.) But rock critics aren’t the only people presently gripped by Fontainesmania.
“They just kind of get into your brain and never leave,” actor, fellow Irishman and GQ cover star Paul Mescal said in an interview for Ovenden’s piece. Mescal describes singer Grian Chatten as “a poet, and also, like, a complete rock-and-roll god,” while noting that he writes “with a very Irish voice.” One example of Chatten’s proudly distinct Irishness, per Mescal: The references, in the 2022 song “I Love You,” to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Ireland’s two leading political parties.
“It’s just something you would hear growing up,” Mescal says. “Like, ‘My dad’s Fine Gael and my mum’s Fianna Fáil.’ You know when you hear a song, and it’s just language that you’ve heard in passing, and suddenly it’s in this song and you have thousands of people screaming it? I always find it ironic, that you can be at a show in London and you have these crowds of young people screaming these lyrics and they haven’t really got a clue what it means. I think that’s the thing about great art, which I think what [Fontaines] are doing is—fundamentally, it can mean different things to different people.”
Mescal notes that he’s met Chatten briefly, but says wouldn’t say “No” to a pint with the whole band. “They’re great craic on a night out, I’m sure,” he says.
