Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten performs 'Fairlies' on Jools Holland

Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten made his debut solo appearance on Later...With Jools Holland on Saturday night (June 17).

The Skerries native released his first solo single ‘The Score’ in April and took to the coveted BBC Two show to perform follow-up track ‘Fairlies’.

“I wrote ‘Fairlies’ in intense heat,” Chatten explained at the time of the track's release. “Partly in Jerez, Spain, partly in LA a couple of days before a Fontaines D.C. tour kicked off. It was a quick write, and I believe I celebrated each line with a beer.”

Chatten is due to release his debut solo album Chaos For The Fly on June 30th via Partisan Records. The album is co-produced by Dan Carey, who has helmed all three of Fontaines D.C.’s albums to date.

“I was walking along Stoney Beach at night and it came to me on the waves," Chatten said of Chaos For The Fly. "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.”

“I just thought, ‘I want to do this myself’,” he added. “I know where we as a band are going next and that’s not where I want to go with this. I’ve got a couple of exaggerated aspects of my soul that I wanted to express.”

“The rest of the band are all creative and songwriters in their own right too,” the 28-year-old said. “I didn’t want to go to them and be like, ‘No, every single thing has to be like this.’ I didn’t want to compromise with these songs in that way.”

Fontaines D.C. will head out on the road in August to support Arctic Monkeys on their 2023 North American tour. Guitarist Carlos O’Connell remarked that the band are planning to “go back into the mindset of writing” after that run of shows.