Foto-© Simon Wheatley
Nach ihrem Megaerfolg mit Skinty Fia legen Fontaines D.C. noch eins drauf und veröffentlichen heute ihr viertes Album Romance via XL Recordings. Klanglich abenteuerlich aber ausgefeilt, explosiv und gleichzeitig introvertiert kommen die elf Tracks daher und zeugen von ungebremster Energie der fünf Jungs aus Irland.
Wir konnten im August mit Drummer Tom Coll via Zoom über die Entstehung von Romance sprechen. Im Interview erzählt er, warum Erfolg Freiheit bedeutet, alte Ideen zurückgelassen werden und Romance gar nicht so eine romantische Platte ist, wie man vielleicht denkt. Wir sprechen außerdem darüber, dass sie von den Artic Monkeys nicht nur den Producer James Ford, sondern vor allem das Selbstverständnis, sich nicht für Geld verbiegen zu müssen, mitgenommen haben. Coll erzählt, dass die Zeitkapsel, die sich beim Schreiben selbst erschaffen, dazu dient, sich nicht zu viel zu hinterfragen, dass der Blick nach vorne gegen Langeweile hilft und warum Romance das erste Album ist, bei dem sie nicht ans Livespielen gedacht haben.
Congratulations on your fourth album Romance. Are you thinking about the release date next week or is it all in the past for you?
For the last four or five months, we haven’t really been thinking about it that much. Now we get that kind of excitement. No matter how many records you do, you still get that stomach kind of feeling a week out. It’s fun to never lose that.
You’re in a different time zone from everyone else. When you were focusing on this album, nobody knew about it. Now the rest of the world is focused on the album, but for you it’s a look back.
It’s kind of hard to get back into that headspace. I feel like for the last four or five months it’s been something that’s only been ours. Only we knew about it and only we heard it. It was very exciting for us. Once it’s out in the world, it’s not really ours anymore. It’s like letting go of all those songs, they’re not for us anymore.
Do you think about what the world will make of it while it’s still yours?
It’s a thing. I feel like just by making it, you think about what people are going to hear. It’s going to be music that’s going to be out in the world and consumed by other people. But we’re pretty good at quelling a lot of those thoughts and trying to be present in it as a group. We’re pretty good at trying to find validation and excitement in our own viewing. I feel like everybody who makes art is thinking about it through somebody else’s eyes. But it’s about trying to find the excitement within yourself.
Your last album Skinty Fia was a big commercial success. I guess it was a different experience to the records before that. How did that affect your work on Romance? Did it give you more freedom or more pressure?
It probably gives us more freedom, really. Until recently there was this kind of under the surface feeling that it could all go away. After doing it for a couple of years and getting used to the whole process of it all, I feel like we’re more confident that we’re in a band and it’s our job and we love it. The fear of it all going away is a bit less. It gives you a lot more freedom in terms of your creative output and just talking about the whole thing.
You went on the US tour with the Arctic Monkeys, gathered new impressions, went off to do your own thing for a while and then got back together to record the album. Romance does not sound like the Arctic Monkeys, but what did you take away from that time that went into the record and what was most important to you personally?
The biggest thing I took away from that tour was seeing a band that’s done seven records and they’ve never compromised their creative output and they’ve never gone down the commercial route. They’re still a really credible, super successful band that’s amazing live every night. Seeing that and being surrounded by that energy was very inspiring. I think it was less a sonic inspiration than a philosophical one.
Skinty Fia dealt with your Irish home and a sense of belonging. How would you describe the overall sentiment of Romance?
This record is less based on place or environment and much more inward looking. It deals with the idea of romance, not just in a romantic way, but the idea of obsession and the darker side that comes with it. You can romanticise anything, but there’s an underlying obsession that sometimes isn’t healthy.
The themes are quite intense, but so is the sonic landscape. There are so many things happening at once. How did you manage that? I imagine that you all sat together and put together a lot of different pieces. Perhaps a very romanticized vision of the process.
No, it was like that. After the tour we spent four weeks in a studio in London going in every day from nine to five and treating it like a real job. It was so much fun collecting all these songs that were a bit disparate and sitting in different rooms and trying to put them together into one cohesive thing. It was a really, really challenging process for sure. It was a very intense four weeks of trying to write and get it all in one place.
You came into the studio with new impressions and visions. How did you bring in the new sonic influences? They are so broad, how did you bring that together?
Everybody had five or six months off and got into different things and all kinds of samplers and strings and a lot more electronic stuff. Everybody was writing on their own. As soon as we got back together we had a lot of different influences. It was a really challenging but fun way to write.
What did you take away from making the record like this except the record itself?
On this record, I really focused on the talent of all the other guys in the band. I was watching all my mates, writing these amazing songs and presenting them to all of us. It was less of a band room album. It was more of a studio record. It was like, “Fucking hell. All these guys are amazing songwriters and I’m privileged to be in the room with them.”
You have known each other since school. Are you still discovering things about each other?
I’ve known all these guys for 11 or 12 years now. We spend almost every day together, but you’re still learning different facets of them. Everybody’s such a multifaceted person, there’s still so much to learn.
You’ve got quite a big tour planned. Do you define yourself as a musician who records songs to play live, or do you record songs and then play them live?
I’d say I record to play live, but I’d say some of the other lads in the band are the opposite. I feel like they’re more studio people. I love performing.
When it comes to putting your shows together, does it come naturally? Is it an intuitive process or do you have a concept of how to combine your new and your older work?
This is the first record where we didn’t really worry about playing it live. With our first three, if we couldn’t play it in the room, it wasn’t going to be on the record. It was very much a band playing, whereas on this one we threw that limitation out the window. We decided to make it more of a layered studio thing. Now we’re trying to figure out how to do it live. It’s a lot more work to try and translate it. We have a new touring member who’s playing samples and extra bits. It’s making it sound a lot more true to the record live.
When there’s new material, is there someone who pushes people together or is it a mutual longing to do it?
It’s a mutual itch. We get very bored very easily. Usually when we do a record we tour for about a year and a half and at the end of that time we’re all itching to do the next thing. We’re not good at not doing anything. It’s always a natural thing for us to take time off and write on our own. I think it’s healthy. I feel like if it was a thing that we were pushed into, we’d push back.
Do you revisit your older writing before you start? Do you have any ideas stored up? Do you look back before you look forward?
Honestly, every time we’ve tried to revisit ideas, they’ve never been done. Once an idea has passed, that’s it for us. It’s always moving on. We’re not people with the B-side on the second album that never made it. That doesn’t feel very creative to us. We’re a group of people who always want to do something that we’re excited about at the moment.
It sounds very like a very present process.
It’s really fun to be in a time capsule in a way. We write and record straight after each other. It was a seven month period of writing and then the album was done. I know other bands spend a lot more time on it but it really works for us to go in, write an album and that’s that period of time.
Does it stop you from overthinking?
Massively. We don’t have enough time to overthink things. We put ourselves under pressure to write it and get it done in two months. It’s a good thing for us. I feel like if we overthink things sometimes it makes the song worse.
Thank you for the interview!
Fontaines D.C. Tour:
07.11.24 München, Zenith
08.11.24 Berlin, Ueber Eats Music Hall
11.11.24 Hamburg, Sporthalle
12.11.24 Köln, E-Werk – ausverkauft
