Fontaines D.C. caught up with NME backstage at Glastonbury 2024, where we spoke about what to expect from new album ‘Romance’, their Glasto schedule clash with IDLES, and being proud of their love of nu-metal KoRn.
Friday night saw the Irish post-punks play a blinding set headlining The Park Stage, receiving a glowing five-star review from NME. However, some fans were dismayed that the Glasto schedule meant choosing whether to watch them or IDLES’ stellar set at The Other Stage.
“‘Clash Of The Shitans’, we’re calling it,” IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen told NME about the clash. “It’s an inevitability that when you get to this stage, you’re going to rub up against your mates. We’re just devastated we don’t get to see them. And they don’t get to see us because they could learn a few things. You know? Ooooooh!”
Talbot added: “It’s happening! It’s like fucking Blur vs Oasis! The comment section’s gonna go wild. Fuck yours in advance. No, we were with them like, literally 45 minutes ago. It’s fuckery innit? It’s fuckery. So it’s a weird thing to happen. But you know, what, there’ll be others.”
And what did Fontaines make of it?
“They’re shitting themselves,” laughed guitarist Carlos O’Connell, before bassist Conor Deegan III added: “They actually asked is if we’d swap backdrops with them, so it says ‘IDLES’ behind us and people think we’re them.”
This is your third time at Glastonbury, this time headlining the Park Stage. How do you feel?
Conor Deegan III: “It feels pretty cool, but we’re happy to just be here and doing it.”
We’ve heard two singles from new album ‘Romance’, with ‘Starburster’ showing us two very different sides of the record. What do they tell us about ‘Romance’?
Deegan: “They tell us who we want to be, but also where we came from as well. ‘Starburster’ is us trying to push things out there and ‘Favourite’ is us trying to bring who we were with us.”
It feels very much like you’re very much creating your own world in terms of the artwork and the new look and aesthetic. What can you tell us about that world?
O’Connell: “For the first time, it’s an album that looks at our present with a forward view, you know? I think in the past we’ve either tried to live in the past or missed the past. Now we’re trying to understand the world we live in right now and not try to think of something that’s gone, but think of what’s to come.”
I heard there’s been a bit of a KoRn influence?
O’Connell: “People love that one! We listen to KoRn, yeah! Everyone’s shitting on KoRn in these interviews. Deftones are amazing too.”
Now that you’ve blown the doors off, do you feel like you could go anywhere now? Could you make a metal album?
Deegan: “I don’t know where we could go to, and I think that’s a really special thing to be able to say when you’re on your fourth record. Could we make our metal record? I don’t know. I think we always try to make a record that has different kinds of ideas for songs. We’ve never made one specific type of record, but maybe that’s me getting to close to it. Maybe it’s the exact same song? I mean it is the same chord progression every time, but we won’t talk about that.”
Fontaines D.C. release ‘Romance’ on August 23 before a full UK and Ireland tour.
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