Truly iconic debut albums bolt out from the starting block and stop listeners in their tracks, and Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Dogrel’ does just that. It is a truly worthy winner of 6 Music Recommends Albums Of The Year 2019.

Unlike most iconic debuts, however, ‘Dogrel’ is also remarkably timeless-sounding and full of depth. The strung out ‘Roy’s Tune’ is a sentimental anthem nodding to ‘The Bends’-era Radiohead, going way beyond the brattish post-punk Grian Chatten and co. first emerged with, while closer ‘Dublin City Sky’ drunkenly staggers into the night like a raging bull finally simmering down. In between, there are instantly gratifying headrushes like ‘Too Real’ and ‘Hurricane Laughter’, songs full of the kind of resolute anger only young, daisy-fresh bands can have.

It’s the kind of record you can imagine having on repeat in 20 years, a timestamp of five fire-fuelled Dublin lads realising their potential.

Steve Lamacq: “One of the things I like about 'Dogrel' is that it opens up a door to another world. It’s like what a good book achieves: when you read a decent novel and it takes you to another town or another time, and you feel at home in this sort of foreign world. It’s a bit C. S. Lewis to me: like you’ve fallen through the back of a wardrobe and found yourself in this city which has been sketched in charcoal, or illustrated by a selection of slightly bent Polaroids or old sepia photographs, and I think it’s terrific. And a lot of it is just about the everyday and the everyday people: some of whom are sharks and winners, and some of them are misfits, and some of them are simply ordinary folk trying to make a go of life, often railing against the odds… But these stories and the people in them, they’re just told in such an understanding, almost conversational way that I think is really impressive. It’s like poetry that’s been hewn from the cut and thrust of a pub conversation, or observed on the bar stool or on the top deck of a bus, and I think this might be one of the album’s greatest achievements: turning the mundane into the magical. But musically, it understands tension, and melody, and how you can invoke different sorts of moods. There’s the sort of raggedy jubilation of ‘Liberty Belle’; there’s that night of biting your nails which is ‘Too Real’; or there’s that claustrophobic, deep down aching sadness and frustration of ‘Roy’s Tune’. It’s like they’ve created a tribute to the part of a city that we never see, but it’s the part of the city which really provides that city’s soul.”

Fontaines D.C.: "We’re delighted that 6 Music have chosen 'Dogrel' as their Album of the Year. Most of the album is about our experiences in Dublin – and the songs can sort of be divided between the hopeless and the hopeful – but it’s essentially about the weight of the world that’s pressing against you, and struggling to find a balance, an equilibrium. It would mean a lot to win this title any year really, but this year in particular there have been a lot of really great, substantial bodies of work, and so for that reason we’re particularly chuffed. So thank you 6 Music for all the support."