FEATURE

A self-confessed “guitar-culture nerd” and TG reader, Fontaines D.C. guitarist Conor Curley has overhauled his band’s sound on Romance, their most ambitious and experimental album to date, inspired by a “massive sounding” fuzz pedal, a beefy new Jazzmaster and… Korn?

Words Stan Bull Photo Jamie MacMillan

“It’s very nice to be in Total Guitar –I’ve always been a fan.” Conor Curley is sitting in a café near his London home.

“In my mum’s attic, there’s a big stack of TotalGuitar from when I was a teenager –I’ve held on to them.”

In the four years since TG last spoke to them, few –if any –guitar bands have had the same meteoric rise as Fontaines D.C. In that time, the Irish quintet –vocalist Grian Chatten, guitarists Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell, bassist Conor Deegan III and drummer Tom Coll –have played hundreds of shows (including aUS tour with Arctic Monkeys), scored aUK number one album with 2022’s SkintyFiaand even picked up a BRIT Award for Best International Act, inching them ever-closer to becoming household names.

This year? The now-London-based group headlined Glastonbury’s Park Stage, performed on the main stage at Reading and Leeds, and released their inspired fourth album

Romance –a bold reimagining of the Fontaines’ core sound. Later this year, two sold-out headline shows at London’s Alexandra Palace beckon, before they return to the city for a huge outdoor concert at Finsbury Park next summer. It’s quite the feat for a post-punk band whose debut album was released in 2019.

“I’ve been trying to write riffs that are like when you started playing guitar,” explains Curley. “It’s such an interesting thing to me, because you hear bands’ first records and they’ll have these riffs that sound so intuitive. They don’t sound laboured over from music knowledge or anything, it just sounds like they’re writing their feelings.”

“IT WAS EXCITING TO HAVE A MORE MODERN, DIGITAL FEEL”

guitar-driven Curley and his American Vintage II 1966 Jazzmaster Right: Tom Coll, Conor Deegan III, Grian Chatten, Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell

Photos Abigail Jessup, Jon Wilkinson

Romance finds Fontaines D.C. embracing anumber of new influences both contemporary and from years gone by. From the scuzzy alt-rock snarl of DeathKinkto the Britpop hat-tip of Bug and the gorgeous ballad HorsenessIs TheWhatness, the band appear unafraid to tear apart their existing sound, writing as confidently as if they were composing a debut album.

These days, Curley admits that he hopes to “not be nailed down by trying to intellectualise the stuff that you’re playing,” but rather “trying to write feelings that end up being the sound.” This approach is clearly one that the guitarist found liberating: “That’s what I want to do for the rest of my career.”