Consequence's2024 Annual Report comes to a close as we reveal our Band of the Year, Fontaines D.C., off the back of their phenomenal new album,Romance.

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Grian Chatten is sitting in the back patio of Philadelphia's El Bar when things get a little meta. Having wandered here from The Fillmore, where he and his bandFontaines D.C. are about to conclude their US tour, we've covered a lot of geographical and conversational ground. At this point, we're actually talking about talking.

"The thing that you learn is those acquiesces in conversation when you kind of pretend to know something, they just don't really fly in interviews," Chatten says. "It's almost like pulling tighter the gap between what you say and who you are. And isn't it interesting that after a certain amount of time, in a way, the ideal would be for that person to be the same thing. In away, right? But also, that sounds like a really damaging thing, to not have separation.

"I basically didn't know which one to do for ages. I kind of still don't know which one to do. I think for interviews, being myself is a better way to go."

Although the song was written by his bandmate Carlos O'Connell, there's a hint of Romance cut "Horseness Is the Whatness" in this observation: "There's not that much to miss/ You choose or you exist." While walking the streets of Philly, there's occasionally a sense Chatten is catching himself actively making a choice, as if heneeds to come up with answers, forcing a separation between Grian Chatten and Grian Chatten, Frontman of One of the World's Biggest Rock Acts andConsequence’s Band of the Year.

"I think being the frontman of Fontaines D.C. is inevitably going to irrevocably change me. I'm sure it already has in several ways," he says. "And that'sstill just me. The only thing I'd like to do is just not become an asshole. I think that's why doing too many interviews kind of freaks me out a bit."

As is ever the case with interviews, it's hard to know for sure which Chatten I'm sharing a beer with in this bar's backyard. Yet, it seems pretty clear it's not someone on the verge of becoming an asshole. Despite end-of-tour exhaustion, the swift and seismic career trajectory shift trigged by Fontaines' new album, and any unease about revealing it all to a journalist, Chatten appears centered. He's engaged, considerate, and – perhaps above all – happy.

"Since I started playing music, touring and stuff like that, I've never felt so well adjusted," he says. "And it's funny because the idea for me has always been if anything outrageously good happens, in terms of career or accolades, to treat it with a healthy sense of irreverence. I think I used to think I was doing that, but I was actually just treating it with disrespect. I'm trying to allow myself to feel the positive things now, as opposed to just shutting them out for fear of losing my control over my own self-worth."

Fontaines D.C have every right to feel positive on the heels ofRomance, their fourth album in just five years. (Fifth for Chatten personally, counting hisChaos for the Flysolo debut.) The critically beloved effort is up for a Best Rock Album Grammy, andElton John would likely agree with its Top 2 placement on ourBest Albums of the Year list. Still, when speaking with Chatten just two months after the record's release, the acclaim has come quickly.

"The two months have felt like a year in a brilliant way," Chatten says. "Not in a fatiguing way; it's been really exciting."

Arriving in April, lead single"Starburster" (again, entering the Top 2 on ourBest Songs of 2024 list) signaled things were going to be different this time. The track is a trip-hop panic attack, and the band's accompanying street-glam aesthetics made it clear they weren't allowing themselves to be pigeonholed as "post-punk Irish poets."

"With every step, with every record, we've thought that we'd shattered some expectations and broken free from the shackles of genres and labels and stuff like that," says Chatten, another reflection of the public-personal dichotomy. "And it's never been enough. I think probably, yeah, I'm fucking jaded. On the fourth album we said, 'Here we fucking go. Let'sreally disappoint some people that want us to be that.'"

Frustrating critics or fans withRomance’s dystopian alt-rock wasn't just fine by Fontaines, it was part of the process. "There's something surreal in the specific kind of relationship that we have now with an audience," Chatten considers. "The fact that there's people that expect something, it's like its own instrument, like there's another member of the band now. It's a kind of meta thing, you know? We're all kind of sharing this thing and now we can move it around the place. Throw the ball up to a different passion, see how many people run from the last record and catch where the next ball's about to land."

As it happens, tossing up a challenge only attracted more people.Romance marks Fontaines D.C.'s first entry on theBillboard 200, landing at No. 97; it hit No. 2 in Ireland, Scotland, and the UK. Although predecessorSkinty Fa reached No. 1 in Britain,Romance more than doubled that LP's first-week sales (Sabrina Carpenter kept Fontaines from back-to-back chart-toppers).

Eschewing expectations in favor of evolution has resulted in what might seem like a massive status jump. However, the band's steady clip of releases since 2019'sDogrel has allowed them to ease into this new level of fame without, as Chatten might have feared, losing themselves.

The 29-year-old Chatten thinks "the older, the better for managing a rise," owing to "maturity" and "self-esteem." Not that they were "fucking child star" young when they debuted, but they also "weren'tthat big. Our world had changed, which was enough to shake the boat, but it wasn't like we became global fucking superstars – thank God. Any faster and I'd be in a bit of trouble. Now, this record has felt like the steepest incline in terms of [leveling up]. It feels similar to the beginning again, but this time, I'm kind of ready and I've got thicker skin."

That's not to say the band's ascension hasn't had personal impact. Chatten says there are times when walking around a city like London without being recognized "is congruent with my fairy tale that nothing has changed at all. Then I'd get on the Tube and be noticed by a bunch of people, and because the fantasy has shattered, there's that kind of a strong emotional reaction in a moment and it's very anxiety-inducing." Not incidentally, this exact situation inspired the nerve-wracked "Starburster."

It's easier when he's "allowed the reality" of Fontaines D.C.'s renown to sink in, but, he says, "My natural disposition is not to be good at it. It's probably a bit of an Irish thing not to be good at it as well, honestly. You're not supposed to think of yourself as better than anyone else. Obviously, Conor McGregor doesn't really have that streak in him, but most Irish people."

He adds, "I love Chappell Roan; I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on my worst enemy. Unless I was fucking really assured that they were gonna be okay, you know? My heart really goes out to anyone that experiences that... You're trying to figure out who you are, and at the same time, all of a sudden, the world is trying to figure out who you are,telling you who you are. You've got to be able to stand up against some really strong waves."

Of course, Chatten has four of his closest mates helping him hold back any waves of anxiety their increased popularity might attract.

Fontaines D.C. have been a road band from the start, and all that time together has allowed the five members to develop a self-sustaining "emotional ecosystem." "We rotate depending on the needs for that day or that week. If I have certain aspects of my personality, for example, that need to be nourished or checked, I might gravitate towards a different person," Chatten explains. "Me and [guitarist Conor] Curley would be best friends for that week. We'll hang out all the time, exclusively, and meanwhile, [drummer] Tom [Coll] and Carlos are doing the same thing. There's this constant kaleidoscopic rotation."

He's grateful they've found this supportive cycle, because Fontaines D.C. aren't planning on slowing down anytime soon. "We've been touring for a few years, and we've had bits of time off. But that is our life. We're probably gonna end up giving a good 10 years to touring... I think it was like, 'Do this or we're fucked.'" Barely a week after their Philadelphia gig and just before launching a European leg, Fontaines D.C. announced aspring 2025 US tour.

The band's dynamics ground their songwriting in much the same way it does their lives as road dogs. Chatten breaks it down into "its simplest form" by imagining a scenario where Curley plays a simple E chord:

"If Curley plays an E chord, like, 'We're just down here,' and I catch it, I'll trust that E chord. Because it's not coming from me, it'll be immediately contextualized. I can hear it going more places when it comes from a friend that I love, but if it comes from me, it's just... I don't know, it's just an E chord. It's not bouncing off anything. It doesn't have any kind of flavor or whatever.

"You can't really judge things through the prism of your own consciousness. It's the prism of another person's consciousness, and then it lands you. It's the difference between two dimensional ideas and three dimensional ideas."

Chatten views this sort of 3D contextualization as essential to his art, something he achieves by weaving "contradictory emotion" into songs. "Otherwise, it just feels like someone looking at you and smiling and saying, 'It's going to be alright.' There's no context for that; you need the person to travel with you to the depths of whatever is causing you anguish, to see that that person resonates with you. And then still saying, 'It's going to be alright,' and then you believe them."

This is how the undeniably dark songs about end-of-the-world love ("In the Modern World") and relationship avoidance ("Bug") onRomanceare able to achieve "reverberating soul" with listeners. "I think that we've probably created a world within which people can recognize certain aspects of themselves," Chatten says. "They can project things that interest them or bother them. And generally just contextualize life in a way that makes it more manageable. Hopefully, for some people."

"If there is any encouragement in our music or hope, it's because I probably need or we need encouragement or hope," he says of howRomance avoids feeling truly desolate. "That's why it starts with, 'Into the darkness again, in with the pigs in the pen.' It's trying to reach across the void and continue the conversation."

Those lyrics are set against a thick array of dooming sonics, inspired more by vibe than musical reference points. It conveys an overwhelming sense of dread, only to have it reframed by the harmonies on the chorus: "Maybe romance is a place." It's that sort of push-pull that allows Fontaines D.C. to so effectively express the record's heady POV of humanity as an "antiquated and fossil-esque" thing rediscovered in a dystopian future – even if Chatten himself wavers in trying to explain it.

"Probably none of this is really coming across," he says, collapsing the distance between public and personal Chatten. "But as someone who contributes to the songwriting, I need to believe this fucking shit anyway, in order to follow through and make records. I need to buy my own dream here. And frankly, music, the point of it is you've put yourself into that song, and then however that song gets eaten up by everybody else, it's on them at that point. As long as you knew what you were doing, and if we all agree on that dream, then it is reality anyway. So at that point, it doesn't matter."

Fontaines D.C. have frequently referenced films likeAkira andWings of Desire or poets like Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac before other musicians when discussing the record's influences. Chatten finds the feelings those touchstones inspire do more to express the themes he's writing about than trying to use sounds or even his own words. It serves as a filter for all his sonic knowledge to "organically conjure the right guitar tones."

I joke that this reminds me of the Hollywood episode ofSeinfeld where Kramer talks about color coding scripts so he can snap to emotions rather than dialogue.

"Kramer is a good example of that kind of character. I would work with Kramer in a fucking heartbeat," he smiles. "I'd rather work with Kramer than work with anyone who works in an entirely cerebral way where they just reference a library of guitar tones."

Kramer wasn't available forRomance, so the band tapped mega-producer James Ford instead. Describing the collaborative process, Chatten suggests Ford's gift was in the patience he showed while the band fleshed out the concepts in their heads. Only once they provided all the "necessary information" to fully bridge the distance between their internal ideas and how others might perceive it did Ford step in to provide his studio contextualization.

Chatten uses "Starburster" as an example. Early in the process ofRomance, he'd delivered Ford a "fairly fully fleshed out" demo, missing only the lyrics. "I was just kind of rambling and stuff, and had a lot of delay on the vocals and shit," recalls Chatten. But despite how "ready" it might have seemed, Ford waited:

"We were kind of building up that song, and he was putting it on the back burner a bit. I finally put a vocal down, and he was like, 'I get it now.' And it was almost like he sealed the room off, cordoned himself off. He's like 'Okay, I'll get it. You can all leave now, and I'm going to make this what I know is going on in your head...' That decision, it's like listening to someone speak even though you want to interject all the time and say, 'Oh, yeah,' or finish their sentences; he doesn't ever want to finish your sentence. He lets you speak."

After hearing you out, Ford "says he either gets it now or doesn't get it now. 'You need to speak more.' But as soon as he gets it, it's like, 'Get the fuck out of here. Let me do this now.'"

Chatten goes so far as to call Ford "a genius," something he says he's never expressed to press before. "His mixing ability is really crazy. For example, 'Starburster,' where there are so many elements, so many frequencies going on in that song. It's such a thick piece of music, and because it's very thick, it's very, very difficult to achieve clarity and it's really difficult to achieve a sense of space. But he completely carved that out. There's like three or four vocals going on, and all of them make sense, and none of them are clustered. Everything has its own space. It's real panoramic music making."

Considering this new echelon of success Fontaines D.C. have reached with an album built fundamentally on the idea of upending expectations, there's something endearingly human in the way Chatten intermittently slips in and out of Just an Artist and Renowned Rock Star. Asked if the reception toRomance, a record specifically design to "disappoint some people," opens opportunity or anxiety for what comes next, he does it again:

"Opportunity, I guess. Definitely not anxiety." He readjusts. "It's difficult for me to tell what level of denial I'm experiencing when I say stuff like that to you. But well, I truly believe that I'm at a point now where I'd be okay with a slew of three-out-of-10 reviews. I feel like actually in a way I'd welcome it because I think it'd be good for me, as a human."

He continues, "This is going to sound so fucking likeThe Crow, but I'm vaguely aware of my own mortality as well. Life's just too short, you know? The fear of public opinion, the fear of just generally other people's opinions of me is falling away from me at a pretty rapid rate... I think if I acted or created in a reserved way, I'd be doing the people who love our music a disservice. I believe what they want is for us to listen to what we want."

Whether or not it's another album of the year contender, Fontaines D.C. have "always got half the next album in our back pockets." But Chatten isn't rushing to pull it out. "We've got a lot of ideas, but this is, funnily, the first time that I have actually allowed myself to really just fucking enjoy this album... I don't know if it means it'll improve the next album or not, but I'm definitelyRomance green right now. And it feels good."

Though he considers it "a very dangerous thing to allow" all the accolades and acclaim to go to his head for risk of, as he said, becoming an asshole, he's allowing himself to embrace it as part of Fontaines D.C.'s journey: "Bill Hicks said, 'It's just a ride.' I really feel like that this time. I really feel like saying 'yes' to bigger opportunities, just because none of it really matters. It's all just a ride. It's about the music that you make and the people that you connect with. It's not about those [other things], it's not about me."

"It's always been about what's next," Chatten says. "I've never been one for enjoying the moment – it's probably a bad way of settling. Rather than kind of lighting a different match every couple of years, I just want to keep this one match burning for as long as I can. I think that's how we build so quickly and that's what's happening right now. And that's probably the kind of band that we're always going to be."