“In the past, I didn’t have the tools to tell the story.”

— Chilli Jesson

That inspiration soon went beyond life on the road and found its way into the studio via Fontaines’ own Carlos O’Connell, who used his production talents to dial up all the crunchy, glitchy moments within Chilli’s new tracks. “Carlos is at the height of his powers,” Chilli nods, “no one can touch this guy. He’s old school, but it’s his experimentation that I found so exciting. Honestly, he’s a fucking wizard!” Thinking back to how this collaboration started, he adds: “It’s so nerve-wracking to play your peers something you’ve made in case they think it’s shit!

“We had a few beers, and I played him some demos, then the next day he asked if I wanted to cut the record. I was just gonna record it myself, but it all came together in such a natural way. He did the whole album in, like, four days. I explained to him before that I wanted to create an environment that felt like the disjointed franticness of loss, and I think he really understood and got excited by that. I gave him total freedom, and I think you can really hear that.”

With the project being so informed by a portion of Chilli’s life which has, in many ways, defined him, he was keen to hark back to his youth, taking cues from some of the biggest names of late ‘90s and early ‘00s indie-rock and alt-folk, combining guttural catharsis and lyrical honesty to mimic the off-kilter journey of grief and loss.

“When I was thinking about influences, I kept going back to being a kid being surrounded by my cousins who introduced me to Smashing Pumpkins and Elliott Smith, so I wanted musically to have elements of that. I went into as much depth as I could to build the picture of me at that time, to have a philosophy alongside the sounds.”

“All the vocals sound wonky because we recorded everything live,” he continues, “I was rejecting that pop world in any way that I could. I didn’t make many decisions musically except that if there was anything where I remotely cringed, it didn’t happen; me and Rudy [Greaves, Dead Dads Club co-founder] only did stuff that truly excited us.”

This is an album that Chilli would have never wanted to be in the position to write, of course, but it’s hard to feel as though this moment in his career isn’t designed by destiny.

“Becoming a dad, being inspired by the boys in Fontaines - I don’t want to descend into being cringe - but I do feel blessed. Everything collided at once in such a brilliant way. People say it’s never the right time, but I can’t tell you just how much it is the right time for me to do this.”

‘Dead Dads Club’ is out 23rd January 2026 via Fiction.