Fontaines D.C. Release New Album “Skinty Fia”

Fontaines D.C. have today released their new album, Skinty Fia. The title is an Irish phrase which translates to English as “the damnation of the deer” and the album’s cover art features a deer, plucked from its natural habitat and deposited in the hallway of a home, illuminated by an artificial red glow. The Irish giant deer is an extinct species and the band’s thoughts on Irish identity are central to Skinty Fia. For a band whose hometown courses through their veins, the D.C. stands for Dublin City, and the album finds them trying to resolve the need to broaden their horizons with the affection they still feel for the land and people they’ve left behind following a recent relocation to London.

There are echoes of Dogrel’s rumbustious rock ’n’ roll, and the bleaker atmospheres of A Hero’s Death, but Skinty Fia, the third in the triumvirate, is much more expansive and cinematic. Fontaines D.C. are a band in a state of constant evolution and this time the result is an album of shifting moods, startling insight, maturity, and considerable emotional wallop.

“And the Irish giant deer is an extinct species. But ‘skinty fia’ is also used as an expletive, in the way you’d say ‘For fuck’s sake’ if you bang your arm on a table or whatever. We just thought there was something really beautiful about that, because it’s really representative of Irish culture in some sense. We were interested in the idea of something really precious or sentimental and attached to family, but also something that’s been taken away from us. Which doesn’t mean we can’t cherish it.” (bassist Conor Deegan III aka Deego)

Skinty Fia can be streamed and purchased here