Fontaines D.C.‘s Conor Curley, clad in wraparound shades, thrums a menacing, barebones bassline. Alone on the stage, he looks like a ‘90s grunge icon. Carlos O’Connell, his hair a flash of pink and his jacket a pop of tiger print, joins him, taps out a skeletal keyboard refrain, leans into a mic and mimics the sound of an explosion. The noise is distorted, warped, flooding the stage, before frontman Grian Chatten appears in a neon-green jacket to croon insidiously through ‘Romance’, the title track from the band’s game-changing new album.
- READ MORE: At home with Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten: “Our personality is bigger than the sound that we make”
It’s a curious way to begin a Main Stage set that serves as a marker-point in the five-piece’s ongoing ascension to all-time greatness, but the sprawling crowd is an indication that Fontaines D.C. have pulled off the rare coup of reaching a mass audience while creating ever-more singular and experimental music. At one point, Chatten looks motionlessly out to the sprawling sea of fans. He doesn’t seem overawed or cocky; he looks like nothing less than a lion coolly regarding a gazelle.
Later, the singer goes in for the kill: he throws his hands out to the audience, conjuring cheers and applause, and batters a tambourine as if channelling his inner Liam Gallagher. In a recent blockbuster interview with NME, Chatten described Fontaines’ new masterpiece as “neon and ridiculous”, and here the band immerse us in this brave new world. “Every time you blink you feel the change,” he sings on the aching ‘Favourite’, a magical song about life’s mundane mysteries.
The brooding ‘Nabokov’, from 2022’s ‘Skinty Fia’, sounds like an emotional bloodletting. “I did you a favour,” Chatten wails as Conor ‘Deego’ Deegan III, on backing vocals, replies sarcastically, “Happy days, yeah?” The sound builds into a cacophony, the heaviosity casually punctured when they barrel into beloved early banger ‘Boys in the Better Land’. Fans climb up on each other’s shoulders, O’Connell gives a freewheeling grin and Chatten allows his jacket to fall open, baring his chest.
Only Fontaines D.C. could get the people going with a ragged indie anthem about Anglophobia. They were great from the start of their career, but it’s like they’ve just decided to be the best band in the world. For proof, look no further than stadium-sized closer ‘Starburster’, its fairground synth stuttering and twisted until the sound clicks into place and takes flight. When friends turn to one another and imitate Chatten’s jagged gasping, it’s a magical end to a literally breathtaking set.
Fontaines D.C.’s Reading Festival setlist was
Recommended
‘Romance’
‘Jackie Down the Line’
‘Death Kink’
‘Here’s the Thing’
‘Nabokov’
‘Boys in the Better Land’
‘In the Modern World’
‘Favourite’
‘I Love You’
‘Starburster’
Follow all of the action as it happens on the NME Reading & Leeds liveblog here.
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