Album review: Grian Chatten soars on solo record Chaos For The Fly

Grian Chatten's individual project is a world away from the music he makes with Fontaines DC, and still very much hits the spot 
Album review: Grian Chatten soars on solo record Chaos For The Fly

Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC has released solo album Chaos For The Fly. 

Grian Chatten, Chaos For The Fly

★★★★☆

 

When an indie star “goes solo” the results are often average at best (Morrissey’s early post-Smiths albums), traumatising at worst (everything else Morrissey has released).

But Chaos For The Fly from Fontaines DC leader Grian Chatten is something else entirely: a deep dive into an aspect of the Skerries, Co Dublin artist’s songwriting that he has not always had a chance to express in his day job fronting a Grammy-nominated group often compared to The Pogues and The Fall.

Fontaines are still a going concern, having released perhaps their finest LP in Skinty Fia last year. Furthermore, Chaos For The Fly is so far removed from the poetic fervour of Fontaines as to almost, but not quite, feel like the work of a different artist.

 If Fontaines DC are a poetry slam in a mosh-pit, Chatten’s stand-alone project is a 2am rumination, full of melancholy and doubt but illuminated by sweetness and humility that gives the record its more-ish quality.

Chatten comes across as perpetually antsy at the head of Fontaines. Here, working again with producer Dan Carey, he is reflective and artfully morose. “I will give you thrills and take your pain,” he whispers on opener, 'The Score', where he goes full 'indie Ed Sheeran' accompanied by acoustic guitar.

Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC.
Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC.

The sound suits him, and throughout Chaos For The Fly, his bruised, cracked voice is revealed to be a great strength (there are lovely backing vocals,too, from his fiancé, Georgie Jesson). He also confirms that as a lyricist, he has evolved past the “Dublin is dank but I like it” tropes of his early work.

Accompanied by guitar and fiddle, 'Fairlies', for instance, is a whirling mediation on solitude. “I can live alone…happy,” he insists, sounding like the loneliest guy on the planet at the bottom of the deepest hole in the world. It’s sad and moving and – in the very best way – the very opposite of Fontaines DC.

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