Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia (Black Vinyl)

Musical protest, unvarnished and loud, is the secret recipe that the quintet, consisting of Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O'Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan III (bass), and Tom Coll (drums), further refines in 2022: on its third album "Skinty Fia".

The title, a colloquial Irish swear word, translates roughly as "damnation of the deer." However, the spelling has been anglicized and the meaning diluted over generations.

Fontaines D.C. recorded ten new songs for "Skinty Fia" together with their producer Dan Carey, in which they call their homeland Ireland, their own identity into focus. "It's about being Irish and expressing that in London, and what you can take away to feel connected to your homeland. We've really tried to hold on to the things that made us Irish. There's a certain sentimentality when you're sitting in an Irish pub in London, surrounded by other Irish people, and it's 4 a.m. and the lights go out and you half-remember those old songs. On the other hand, there's also something somber and a little bleak about it."

Somber is also the first single of the record, the song "Jackie Down The Line", in which singer Grian Chatten sings extremely melancholy about the failure of a relationship.

"Part bittersweet romance, part somber political triumph, the songs ultimately form a love letter from afar, lamenting an increasingly privatized culture in danger of going the way of the extinct Irish giant deer," according to a description by the band.