Amid a weekend of truly historic live occasions – Oasis’ first reunion show after a 16 year-long absence, and Black Sabbath’s emotional farewell in their Birmingham hometown – you’d almost be forgiven for overlooking the assemblance of Ireland’s Fontaines D.C. at their sold-out Finsbury Park show.
That is, of course, until you arrived near the leafy North London site on Saturday, where instead of the usual ticket touts offering potentially dodgy admission, fans were quite literally begging for spares. (One couple pleading for tickets held up a sign saying they’d flown from the States and it was their wedding anniversary, in an attempt to pull on the heartstrings).
For those lucky enough to have secured a ticket – approximately 45,000 of them, in fact – what unfolded was a musical communion of beauty and unrelenting power.
Whilst the Gallagher brothers and Ozzy Osbourne’s all-star entourage might have shown their audiences the enduring success of musical epochs gone by, Fontaines D.C. have been at the forefront of a more recent guitar rock renaissance and post-punk love affair, with a grunge-laden sound melded with frontman Grian Chatten’s rich, conflicted poetry.
On this moody-skyed evening, that poetic intensity was on full, visceral display. The sprawling setlist – a 23-track marathon – didn’t just affirm Fontaines D.C. as a great live act, but as one of the most essential bands of their generation. And with Glastonbury still beating in the weary legs of last week’s festival-goers, here they made a Pyramid Stage-sized case for headlining the event in the near future.
Of course, given the events of Glastonbury, and our continuously fraught political times, the day was not without an intertwining of art and politics. Few bands have been in the spotlight of this discourse more than Kneecap, who were on a support billing that also featured Cardinals, Been Stellar, Blondshell and Aussie punks Amyl and The Sniffers.
The Belfast trio’s set was drenched in sardonic humour and snarling lyricism, from their track ‘Your Sniffer Talks Are Shite’ to their chants against Keir Starmer as being “just a sh*t Jeremy Corbyn”. There were many calls, too, for a free Palestine, and an earlier-than-expected arrival of Chatten to the stage, to perform ‘Better Way To Live’, embracing the band at the end.
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, had half-jokingly told the crowd we were “spoilt” for being able to see Fontaines D.C., as well as Amyl and the Sniffers – and he would be proved just right.
As the sun began to set, Fontaines D.C. opened with the thunderous pulse of ‘Here’s The Thing’, quickly rolling into ‘Jackie Down the Line’ and ‘Boys in the Better Land’ – a trio of tracks that took from their latest, XL-released Romance LP, and stretched back to their 2019 debut Dogrel, via 2022’s sublime Skinty Fia record. This would prove a theme of the night, in a set that traced their evolution from wiry debutants to hardened, poetic provocateurs.
‘Televised Mind’ oozed menace, while ‘Roman Holiday’ offered an escapist reprieve. Newer material from Romance’s expanded release provided some of the night’s most striking moments. ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’ arrived early, as Chatten strode along the runway jutting into the crowd, showing the band’s dynamic range, which is just as comfortable dealing in urgent ferocity as it is in wistfulness.
Track after track landed, celebrating this depth of feeling. ‘A Hero’s Death’ still hits like a sermon (“Life ain’t always empty”); ‘Before You I Just Forget’ swooned with romantic detachment, and ‘Motorcycle Boy’ offered surreal, cinematic detours. One of the most moving moments came in ‘Horseness Is the Whatness’, dedicated to guitarist Carlos O’Connell’s wife and daughter, its spoken-word strangeness transmuted into tenderness.
More glorious tunes rained down, as the grey skies held back their tears, and an inflatable heart-shaped figure from Romance’s album cover glowed in different colours. ‘Bug’ and ‘Hurricane Laughter’ tore through the park at pace; ‘Nabokov’, jagged and unpredictable, showed the band’s sonic unpredictability; and ‘Desire’ swooned in the night air.
‘Favourite’, one of their cheerier songs, provided one of the night’s big singalongs, and was dedicated to Chatten’s fiancée Georgie Jesson, before the jangly thrill of ‘Liberty Belle’ brought the pre-encore section to a close with swagger.
As the band returned to the stage to the ominous chords of Romance’s titular opener, you could momentarily catch your breath at the sheer emotional heft of it all. ‘In the Modern World’ then bristled with disaffection, before ‘I Love You’ – their most explicitly political song – unfolded with stark drama, the stage lit red and green.
As the final lines rang out a screen projected a simple message: “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice.” The message now landed with even heavier resonance. As with all things Fontaines, it didn’t feel performative – just painfully, poetically honest.
To close, they unleashed ‘Starburster’. A song inspired by a panic attack suffered by Chatten, it encapsulates the band’s ability to turn torment into art, with its jagged trip-hop edge inducing yet another immense singalong. It was a perfect end to a night that rarely settled into predictability.
Indeed, on a weekend of musical history, Fontaines D.C. offered something more potent still: a vision of the future. Ferocious and tender, disillusioned and defiant, they stood tall as a band not just of now, but of what’s still to come. If Oasis and Black Sabbath signify, to some extent, the past, Fontaines D.C. are the pulse of the present – with potent, post-punk poetry we’ll be singing decades down the line.
