Fontaines DC just released their new album, Skinty Fia, and they’ve given fans a preview of what the upcoming tour behind the release might look like with a new late night performance. As the musical guests on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the band ran through “Nabokov” live, showcasing their particular brand of post-punk. The Dublin band previously explained their somewhat obscure album title for those who might be a bit confused.
“Skinty Fia’ is an expression that our drummer’s great auntie used to say,” the band’s frontman, Grian Chatten, explained. “She was an Irish-speaking person, like strictly Irish-speaking, exclusively Irish-speaking person. She used to say that as kind of like a colloquialism. I never heard it before Tom [Coll] said it to me recently, but it was a substitute for a swear word, basically. If she drops something, she’d say, ‘Ah, skinty fia.’ It roughly translates as ‘the damnation of the deer.’ I don’t know, it sounds like mutation and doom and inevitability and all these things that I felt were congruous to my idea of Irishness abroad. Like if you go to Boston, that expression of Irishness. That’s skinty fia to me. That’s that mutation. That’s a new thing. It’s not unlicensed and it’s not impure. Just because it’s diaspora, it’s still pure. It’s just a completely new beast.”
If you watch the performance up top, you’ll feel that sentiment come through loud and clear.