Fontaines D.C. to play sold out Leeds gig on day their debut album is released

One of the sold out dates is at the Brudenell Social Club tomorrow night (Friday) when Leeds music fans will get a chance to see what all the fuss is about.

Over the last year, Fontaines D.C. have released four critically acclaimed AA side singles, all of which garnered considerable support both from radio, with the band A-listed at BBC Radio 6 Music for their last single ‘Too Real’, and from a vast range of international press, with the band featuring in a number of end of year lists and receiving high praise from the likes of Rolling Stone, Q, NME, and Time Out.

The band have toured extensively over the last year, supporting Shame on their UK tour and selling out every date their own UK headline tours in December 2018 and this month.

Similarly, they have just completed a 20+ plus run of sell out dates across Europe and Scandinavia, will support label mates Idles on their US tour and are also set to appear at various festivals across 2019 including End Of The Road, Truck Festival, Y Not Festival, SXSW.

Much anticipated debut album ‘Dogrel’ is out tomorrow via Partisan Records.

From the short, sharp opener “Big” (surely rivalling “I Wanna Be Adored” as an irresistible opening statement of self-confident intent) the album surprises at every turn. The singles sit fully at ease along much more complex, emotionally loaded pieces such as “Roy’s Tune” and “The Lotts,” both examples of a bruised but unbowed melancholia which is the record’s true genome.

“Television Screen,” shares its title with the first ever Irish punk single (by The Radiators From Space featuring future Pogue and another of the great chroniclers of old Dublin Town, the late Philip Chevron) and it is a different beast again: melodic and stately.

“Boys in The Better Land,” in another twist, perfectly captures the spirit of the album’s title.

As a band, Fontaines D.C. are on fire throughout: witness the brief, urgent mechanical grind of “Chequeless Reckless,” which perhaps comes closest to a Fontaines D.C. manifesto: “A sellout is someone who becomes a hypocrite in the name of money. An idiot is someone who lets their education do all of their thinking. A phony is someone who demands respect for the principles they affect. A dilettante is someone who can’t tell the difference between fashion and style. Charisma is exquisite manipulation. And money... is the sandpit of the soul.”

Spat out by Grian Chatten with palpable contempt, they are words that could come back to haunt him, but he’s smarter than that.

‘Dogrel’ is a debut which is best enjoyed as a whole; it is very much in the grand tradition of the album as art form, just as this is a band very much in the classic band mold: great singles, an indefatigable work ethic and an utter aversion to standing still.

Reluctant to be viewed as part of any wider movement (“I get a bit uncomfortable with some of the comparisons that have been made,” says Chatten, as he must, though they inevitably shall be) Fontaines D.C. have delivered on their promise.

It is to their credit and it augurs well that their collective eye is already on the next phase as they prepare for now to merely take on the world for real.