Carlos O’Connell is reflecting on September’s Mercury Prize. Fontaines DC were relatively unfancied by the bookies, clocking in odds of 7/1 on the day of the announcement, and yet there was still a sense of unfulfillment when Dave’s ‘Psychodrama’ beat the Irish outfit’s debut ‘Dogrel’ to the trophy. “We didn’t think it was a big deal when the nomination came in, but it felt like a big deal by the time the ceremony came around,” the guitarist reflects. “It was definitely a bit of a School of Rock moment. All this build-up, you play this huge battle of the bands, and then somebody else wins. It was like there wasn’t enough of a release of adrenaline. It left me feeling like I didn’t quite know what to do with myself for a few days.”

Minutes earlier, Carlos had been talking about how awards don’t mean a great deal to either himself or his four bandmates. Yet if he sounds confused on the topic, you can forgive him for it; 2019 has been such a whirlwind year for Fontaines that it’d be more surprising if they had figured out what they thought of it all yet.

We’ve caught the guitarist in Los Angeles, on the eve of the first recording session for ‘Dogrel’’s follow-up. And despite the fact that they’ve just taken a well-deserved holiday in Mexico (“We spread out, tried to spend some time alone, and ended up bumping into each other anyway”), the band are apparently no closer to having their runaway success sink in. “It’s taken a little bit of time for us to get a handle on,” Carlos continues. “I feel like I’m just now starting to appreciate how great the European tour we did in January was. It was just the five of us in a splitter van, no crew whatsoever, driving across the continent in the middle of winter. Everything was a bit of a disaster, but we learned to accept that and enjoy it. I look back on that now, and there’s no stress in my memory - just really special times with my best friends.”

That run of shows kicked off a breakneck year that’s seen the Dublin punks meet with success at every turn. Preceding the Mercury nod were across-the-board rave reviews for their debut - an incendiary offering that married, with uncommon poise, an uncompromising post-punk aesthetic with a thoughtful, articulate thematic approach. Next month’s tour of the UK and Ireland, which takes in Kentish Town’s 2,300-capacity Forum and two huge hometown shows at Vicar Street, is long since sold out. There might be no greater signifier of how thick and fast the highs have come, meanwhile, than the fact that not only have they packed out the Forum on their first album, they’ve already sold out their first headline appearance at Brixton Academy next February.

“Everything seems to be a step ahead of us, and we’re chasing behind it,” nods the guitarist. “The whole thing has been hard to process. We put the November tour on sale at the start of the year, and we were all shitting a brick about it. We felt it was a very bold move to be aiming for rooms of that size - we were asking ourselves, “Is this stupid? Is this way too big?” And now, we’ve already got Brixton to look forward to, which is intense.”