Grian Chatten: Chaos for the Fly review the Fontaines DC frontman gets personal

(Partisan)
Chatten dials down the rollicking post-punk of the Dublin band with a solo debut of haunted, Leonard Cohen-esque songs

“What’s normal for the spider,” the Addams family’s Morticia once noted, “is chaos for the fly.” Fontaines DC’s frontman Grian Chatten, meanwhile, has described his debut solo album as “a horror movie with a hyperreal colour palette”. Which is to say: the rollicking post-punk of the Dublin band has been dialled down on this suite of haunted, intimate songs, where the prevailing vibe is a rapidly sinking feeling. Despite calling on Fontaines drummer Tom Coll and go-to producer Dan Carey, Chatten felt his bleak storytelling – about stuck lives in seaside towns – and personal takes on human failings needed total creative control outside the band democracy. Chatten’s fiancée, Georgie Jesson, contributes guest vocals; fans should note, though: FDC LP4 is in the works.

On Chaos for the Fly, Chatten’s manner sometimes recalls those great critics of human nature Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith. The music wanders from tinny loungecore (Bob’s Casino) to slinky tension (the excellent closing track, Season for Pain). These are not alienating leaps, though. Fairlies could be an Fontaines tune; Chatten’s vocals and writerly voice are instantly recognisable – declamatory on the three-legged wooze of Last Time Every Time Forever, or folk-adjacent on The Score. All of the People, meanwhile, is a bitter broadside against the kind of false friends the singer in a successful rock band might have to contend with.

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