Fontaines D.C. – “Gouge Away” (Pixies Cover)
Fontaines D.C. took last year by storm, pulling off one of the more notable ascensions of a young rock band in recent memory. Their debut Dogrel fueled a ton of buzz, and earned them a Mercury Prize nomination. (It also ranked high on our list of the best albums of 2019.) Despite being on the road relentlessly amidst it, the band’s writing hasn’t slowed down at all — pretty much since Dogrel came out, Fontaines have said they have a second album almost ready to go.
Presumably we’ll be hearing something from that soon, given that every time a member of Fontaines gives an interview they talk about the new music. This happened again when they stopped by Annie Mac’s BBC show earlier this week. But, they also did something different and offered up a new cover of the beloved Pixies song “Gouge Away.”
At first the band say they chose it simply because “it’s a great tune,” though when pressed frontman Grian Chatten tells a short anecdote about being 10 years old and seeing his first proper gig in Dublin, Pixies with Kings Of Leon opening. The band then launch into their cover, which doesn’t do exactly what you might expect if you saw Fontaines’ raucous live shows at any point in the last year. They lean into the blearier passages of the song and let that bleed out all over it, with Chatten skipping the screaming bit and making the whole thing a bit more lowkey unnerving than the original’s push-pull intensity. Check it out below.