Grian was the first of the band to move to London, with the other four members following - deliberately or otherwise - in the following year. Tom, who says he previously hated his experiences in the capital, flew over to join the band to write ‘Skinty Fia’, expecting to stay for a few months before hurriedly returning to Dublin. Two years later, he’s visibly enlivened by his new life in the city, moving from his first home in the leafier Holloway to Dalston to get closer to the city’s buzzy beating heart. “We’re like a little moving circus!” he laughs. “Everyone I hang out with or meet is Irish. We do stick together.”

Tom describes a “mutated Irishness” at the heart of the band’s third album, and these feelings of anger, confusion and (sometimes) acceptance are splashed all over the record. Opening track ‘In ár gcroíthe go Deo’ translates as ‘in our hearts forever’ and made headline news in 2020 when an Irish woman in Coventry was banned from having the phrase on her gravestone without an English translation, so nobody misconstrued it as a political slogan.

Elsewhere, ‘Roman Holiday’ sees Grian trying to embrace London as an Irishman, wearing the aspersions and xenophobic stereotypes cast upon him as “a badge of honour,” while the roaring ‘I Love You’ begins as a love song and ends as a thrashing exorcism of the guilt he feels for leaving his homeland for a country that has caused it so much pain in the past.

This grappling with identity is also beautifully reflected in the album’s instrumentation, which features both the sparsest and most dense music they’ve written to date. In the album’s second half, the song ‘The Couple Across The Way’ – a stark departure from the Fontaines of old – features just Grian’s voice and an accordion, and leads into the title track, an industrial hammerblow which sees the frontman take on the cadence of a rapper more than a punk poet, over scything, metallic electronic music. The juxtapositions present in the band’s lives, the country they left and the one they now call home, are played out thrillingly.

Fontaines DC’s move to London coincided with continued lockdowns, meaning that the five members were able to settle into their new homes without the constant interruption of touring. This domesticity also proves an anchor of ‘Skinty Fia’, bringing a newfound stillness and reflective quality to Grian’s songwriting.

On the aforementioned ‘The Couple Across The Way’, he writes of an arguing man and woman opposite his apartment, frightened and intrigued by the prospect of that becoming him and his fiancée in the future. To hone in on the feeling of putting down roots, he asked bassist Conor Deegan to make a cup of tea in producer Dan Carey’s kitchen while he recorded his vocals in the corner of the room: “I wanted a tiny hint of domesticity in the background,” he says.

As with ‘Dogrel’ and ‘A Hero’s Death’, ‘Skinty Fia’ was recorded at the Speedy Wunderground mastermind’s Streatham studio in South London. “It’s a relationship of true friendship,” Grian says of the band’s work with Dan, “and it means that we have an unbelievable amount of fun working on stuff. I don’t think, if we worked with another producer, I’d have the confidence to skip around the room when an idea was executed well.”

For ‘A Hero’s Death’, Fontaines had initially decamped to Los Angeles’ iconic, plush Sunset Sound Studios to record, but scrapped the sessions and headed back in with Dan after making an album that was “too polished” and “like a big cocaine second album,” as Grian told DIY in 2020. “It wasn’t a cocaine album in that we were doing loads of cocaine, just in its sound,” a laughing Grian is quick to clarify when reminded of the quote today. The choice he and the band made then - to prioritise comfortable and fun working relationships over glitz and glamour - is one that they firmly stand by however, and an ethos that they’ve carried with them ever since.

Two years later, this choice can be seen somewhat as a turning point for the band, leading them away from the delusional rockstar brink Grian says they flirted with after the tour for ‘Dogrel’, and back into the bosom of relationships that are personally fulfilling as well as artistically well-suited.

“I recognise certain ugly characteristics in myself that were a product and a result of touring life,” the frontman reflects. “I became quite narcissistic, and couldn’t fuckin’ stop talking about myself when I met up with my old mates. When you’re on tour, your world revolves around you, and all your mates in the crew are all having to make sure that you get on stage and do your thing. It’s this weird little world that encourages you to have this toxic idea of yourself being at the centre of things on a daily basis.”

When he would go back to Dublin between tours, he says, he developed an “ugly reflex” of zoning out while his old friends updated him on their lives and jobs, waiting “until I could talk about myself again.” “Getting rid of that was…” he continues before pausing and chuckling to himself, processing the change in real time. “Jesus Christ, I truly dread to think what type of album I would’ve written if I still had that mindset.”

Instead, he wrote ‘Skinty Fia’: a record he sees as more akin to ‘Dogrel’ than ‘A Hero’s Death’ in its “communal” message, and one that tracks shifting cultures and identities - that’s angry yet hopeful, confused yet defiant. It’s their best album yet.

While everything may seem rosy as the ‘Skinty Fia’ world tour beckons, Grian has one tiny worry left. “I don’t know what I’ll write about on this tour,” he says. “Because we have to keep writing. It’s always been the way.

“Writing is proof that I’m alive,” the frontman continues, his eyes suddenly glistening. He cuts a noticeably more animated figure when looking towards the future than regurgitating the past. “Writing means that I’m still thinking and moving.

“If we write a tune together on the day of a gig, that gig will undoubtedly be better,” he concludes. “It gives us back our sense of autonomy and I become a better partner, son and brother when I’ve written something. It allays all my fears and insecurities for a little while.”

‘Skinty Fia’ is out 22nd April via Partisan.