Dead Dads Club, the new band fronted by Palma Violets’ Chilli Jesson, have shared a new single produced by Fontaines D.C., ‘Volatile Child’. Listen below.
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Following previous singles ‘Don’t Blame The Son For The Sins Of The Father’ and ‘Goosebumps’, the new song from Dead Dads Club marks the latest offering from their self-titled debut album, which is set for release on Fiction Records on Friday, January 23. Pre-order here.
The record charts Jesson’s emotional reckoning with grief following the death of his father, and comes produced by Fontaines guitarist Carlos O’Connell.
Speaking about the themes that inspired the track, Jesson said: “The song follows a young man standing at the edge of his breaking point in a small YMCA room in Paris. Lost in the noise of grief and isolation, he’s pulled back from the brink when he sees a vivid, grounding vision of his late father.”
Jesson moved away from the kind of music that once defined him in the wake of his father’s death, until Fontaines D.C. invited him on tour and reignited his passion for introspective, raw songwriting.
Palma Violets quietly split in 2016 after releasing two albums, 2013’s ‘180’ and 2015’s ‘Danger In The Club’, and Jesson went on to form new band Crewel Intentions.
The band’s Sam Fryer, Will Doyle, and Peter Mayhew later teamed up with The Big Moon’s Celia Archer, plus guitarist Adam Brown as Gently Tender in 2018. That year, we spoke to Jesson about his time in Palma Violets and how it differed from his work with Crewel Intentions.
“I think, with Palma Violets… I was so young. I’d dealt with some big things early on in my life, so I suppose Palma Violets’ outlet was almost to shroud everything in irony. That was the charm of the band,” he said at the time.
“I think we always made conscious decisions not to be too personal, and I think when you write with someone, it’s very difficult to be overtly personal, because you share the song. Now I’m in a position where it felt necessary to pull in my father’s death, which I never really dealt with… I never had the chance to channel that stuff, and it felt like now was the time.”
As for Fontaines, their track ‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’ landed at 23 on our round-up of the year’s top 50 songs, with Andrew Trendell writing: “Just when you thought they’d left it all on the field with 2024’s career-high ‘Romance’, Dublin’s finest went the extra mile with this deluxe-edition bonus track. Inspired by guitarist Carlos O’Connell’s newborn child, ‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’ sighs with a pure, innocent euphoria and optimism. Enjoy these days while you can.”
They are among the hundreds of artists taking part in the No Music For Genocide campaign, calling for their work to be geo-blocked on Spotify and other streaming platforms in Israel in protest against what an independent United Nations inquiry found to be a genocide in Gaza.
They will also be playing a headline spot at Ireland’s Electric Picnic alongside Gorillaz and CMAT, as well as Reading & Leeds 2026 with fellow headliners Florence + The Machine, DAVE, Charli XCX, RAYE, and Chase & Status.
Returning to Little John’s Farm in Reading and Bramham Park in Leeds on the Bank Holiday weekend of Thursday 27 – Sunday 30 August 2026, next year’s edition of the iconic twin site festival will see the band play their first scheduled live show since wrapping up the campaign for the Mercury-nominated fourth album ‘Romance‘ earlier this summer.
The tour kicked off with an acclaimed and visceral appearance at R+L 2024, and ended with a run that included the biggest headline show of their career at London’s Finsbury Park, with some fans now speculating the announcement suggests new material is coming in the year ahead.
