Words & Photos: David McEneaney
Fontaines D.C. kicked off the first of three sold out nights at Dublin’s Vicar St, with support from the excellent Wunderhorse, to promote their latest album, ’Skinty Fia’.
Wunderhorse:
After the opening act filled the room with both their increasingly loud sound and more and more people who were drawn in to see where it was coming from, the stage was then set for the main act.
While the by then heated and well lubricated crowd grew more and more restless, it appeared that the band knew exactly what they were doing, delaying their entrance until the absolute last second before it went from the high energy of anticipation to…something else entirely.
As soon as the lights eventually went down and the silhouettes of the band began to appear, the by then jam packed venue erupted and seemed to create the exact amount of energy needed to activate the singer, Grian Chatten, who exploded onto the stage with the level of intense energy of someone who had just been ’started on’ by the entire room, but who was also feeding off of every single person in it.
This relentless swagger continued throughout the entire set, where he would get to the point where he would clearly have the audience in the palm of his hand, then make a sudden almost instinctual lunge to jump out and join them. You could see that every time he was only barely able to stop himself because he knew he had a job to do, and that was be himself in front of some of the most loyal and appreciative fans I’ve seen a long time.
The band hurtled from hit to hit, playing both the best of the new album but also their back catalogue, pleasing the newly initiated and hard core fans equally.
You could see (and hear) from the crowd that these people were serious, and the performance from the band both mirrored and instigated this feeling, like a symbiotic relationship that almost pushed the other side to go further. Everywhere I went I was surrounded by people who were singing along to every word.
After the gig, there was another perfectly timed break before the encore, where (after everyone realised they either didn’t know the second chorus of the ‘Ole Ole Ole’ song or there just wasn’t one…32 years later) the energy was about to shift to one of ‘ok is that it?’, the lads returned on stage to blast through 4 more of their biggest crowd pleasers, finishing the night with the appropriate choice of ‘I Love You’, the feeling of which by this stage you could tell went equally both ways.
This was a gig by a band who are currently at the top of their game and who you can see have learned a lot about both themselves and their fans after their recent world spanning adventures.
If last night is anything to go by, this was Fontaines D.C. way of making a very direct statement of ‘We’re home!’, and if I were you, I would do what I can to catch them while they are, because with the restless energy emitted from Grian on stage, I doubt that will be for long.
Set List:
Nabokov
A Lucid Dream
Sha Sha Sha
Television Screens
Skinty Fia
You Said
I Don’t Belong
Big Shot
How Cold Love Is
Too Real
Televised Mind
Jackie Down The Line
Roy’s Tune
Roman Holiday
A Hero’s Death
___________________________
Big
Liberty Belle
Boy’s In The Better Land
I Love You
