In the last four years since their debut album Dogrel, Fontaines D.C. have enormously impacted the post-punk scene. Their debut received a Mercury Prize nomination, then a year later, A Hero’s Death earned a Grammy nomination before 2022’s Skinty Fia flew straight to the top of the UK and Irish Album Charts. Some may then wonder why frontman Grian Chatten would want to make the potentially risky move of embarking on a solo career.
Chatten’s solo debut, Chaos For The Fly, was inspired by a small coastal town thirty miles north of Dublin. He explained, “I was walking along Stoney Beach at night, and it came to me on the waves. I just stood there and looked at them, and I heard the whole fucking thing. Every part of it, from the chord progressions to the string arrangements.” Chatten concedes the songs could have travelled in a different direction and been reimagined with his Fontaines D.C. bandmates, but he states, “I want to do this myself. I know where the band are going next, and that’s not where I want to go with this”.
His decision to go alone has resulted in a strikingly intimate album during which Chatten’s earnest, poetic lyricism shines through. Although having teamed up with Fontaines D.C. long-time producer Dan Carey, the brutal ferocity of his band may be missing, the brooding intensity of his lyricism remains.
While Fontaines D.C. opened their debut album with the savage punk track “Big”, Chatten’s solo effort begins a world away. “The Score” delicately opens Chaos For The Fly with soothing finger-picked guitar laying a foundation for Chatten’s soft vocals. Having earlier explained, “A lot of the album was just me and a guitar, and I like the idea of it being boiled down to those elements.” the stripped-back, intimate nature of the record is immediately evident with the first track, with only acoustic guitar and a subtle bass line that kicks in through the chorus. His penchant for poetic lyricism is heard early with lines such as, “I am that wave that breaks below, I will give you thrills and take your pain”.
Any thoughts the record made be centred around an acoustic guitar are quickly dispelled as the second song, “Last Time Every Time Forever”, begins with the bouncy beats of an electronic drum machine before mellowing strings kick in.
The combination of up-tempo strings and powerfully strummed acoustic guitar chords give “Fairlies” a lively, folk-inspired beginning. Chatten has been noted for dispensing pearls of wisdom and advice through his lyrics written for Fontaines D.C., and his debut solo album continues that tradition, with the Irishman informing, “Anger makes you sick and weak” during the first verse of the third song. The chorus of “Fairlies” also sees Chatten powerfully open his vocals to proclaim, “I can live alone, Happy, Where I like to be”.
Later, Chatten again taps into one of his lyrical strengths, often evidenced in Fontaines D.C. – repeating lines. This is clear in the intimate, relaxing “East Coast Bed.” The chorus of “An east coast bed” continually repeated may strike some as uninspired, but it proves memorable.
Chatten’s partner Georgie Jesson is a backing singer across the album but is most prominent on “Bob’s Casino.” A positive opening that hears the suave notes of brass instruments and Jesson announces, “Let’s go, let’s go”, gives way to a relaxed lounge feel with a laid-back bass guitar riff driving the song on. Chatten’s earnest vocals help tell a dark tale, “It’s a poor man’s game, this serious life”, while Jesson provides a brighter light through the chorus yet manages to keep an emotive touch, “You could talk about the only time, You ever did things right”.
One of the darker tracks on the album, “All Of The People”, is constructed with atmospheric piano chords entwined with gently picked guitar notes as Chatten sings of the pitfalls of fame, “You think that you love me, But you don’t, You think that you know me, Yeah well you just don’t”. It ends by asking and answering, “What kind of fool would follow signs that were never there? All of the people”.
The firmly strummed acoustic guitar is once again paired with soaring strings on “Salt Throwers Off A Truck”, which again demonstrates Chatten’s poetic side when describing a cold spell in New York, “Salt throwers were taming the sidewalks with haste, Til the whole of the city was seasoned to taste”. The album focuses on human characters, with “Salt Throwers Off A Truck” following that trend, ending with the haunting description of a man who “felt too deeply, too often, too long, And now he’ll feel nothing forever.”
The penultimate number, “I Am So Far”, hears Chatten and Jesson duet through the melancholic chorus of “Seeking only answers, hearing only lies” before the bittersweet closer “Season For Pain” finishes with Chatten’s raw lyricism on full show, “If you have nowhere to go, Get used to the rain, I doubt you’ll find what you’re looking for, I doubt the feeling remains, This is no season for loving, This is the season for pain”.
Although only nine tracks in length, Chaos For The Fly traverses a range of emotions and stories. In writing the album, Chatten explained, “I wanted to explore the stories and the people of a small seaside town, the underbelly of that life. The significance of their lives. The seediness and darkness. The bitterness of lives not lived”. As a result, darkness throughout the record is permeated, although it manages to dispense an air of beauty and an ember of hope. This is a testament to Chatten’s spellbinding lyricism.
Chaos For The Fly is a hugely positive start for Grian Chatten’s solo career. If he can find such inspiration for so many stories from a small coastal town, how many stories he can find in his now-permanent base of London remains to be seen. The raw power of his band may not have been displayed, but Chatten has created an intimate, honest, commanding debut, which leaves the impression that there can be so much more to come from him as a solo artist.
1 Trackback / Pingback