Following an early summer riddled with tension between vocally political bands speaking out and actual politicians trying to shut them down, there’s an overt sense of unity and protest to the artists that take to the stage in Finsbury Park for Fontaines DC’s long sold out, 45,000-strong victory lap forlast year’s fourth LP Romance. Kneecap – still at the centre of much of the furore – are given a hero’s welcome. “It’s great to be back in London and not be in court,” deadpans the band’s Mo Chara, who’ll return to the stand next month to face the verdict of his recent highly contested terror charges.
Firebrand Aussie punks Amyl and the Sniffers dedicate Some Mutts Can’t Be Muzzled to Bob Vylan, whose singer is currently under criminal investigation for his anti-IDF chants at Glastonbury Festival last week, while both Kneecap and Fontaines DC project varying messages in support of Palestine on the screens throughout their sets. “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice” reads the statement at the culmination of the headliner’s set, following climactic penultimate track I Love You.
It adds a charged undercurrent to the occasion that suits the Dublin quintet’s blistering arsenal perfectly. Where their pair of Alexandra Palace shows last year began with a dramatic, instantly immersive curtain drop, it takes a little longer for the impressive production – all stadium-sized, wrap around screens, sickly neon pink and green lighting, and an eery projection of a two-headed pig – to ramp up. But as the set builds, so does the feeling of Fontaines as a generational band. Oasis might have made a roaring return this week up in Cardiff, but of the past decade’s guitar groups, Grian Chattenand co feel like the most likely to ascend to anything resembling the Gallagher’s level of adoration.
You can sense it in the epic sing-along of meditative slowieDesire as much as the giddy mosh that greets debut album track Boys In The Better Land. Chatten, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Sinead O’Connor’s face, has the intensity and swagger of a classic frontman; striding down the walkway during the rattling claustrophobia of Televised Mind and spitting out the rallying manifesto of A Hero’s Death like a punk rock preacher. Early track Big, with its youthful dreams of a richer, fuller life, are all the more poignant now that they resemble a prediction, while It’s Amazing To Be Young finds a perfect setting in the free-spirited environs of a (sort of) festival.
Where, so often, the sound at London’s park events is subdued and frustrating, here it rings out at satisfyingly cathartic volume. It gives the warped rumbles of encore opener Romance glorious heft, while the asphyxiated gasps of Starburster close the night with one of the strangest, most singular anthems of recent years. In the six years since first album Dogrel, Fontaines DC have cemented themselves as the band of their generation. Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, one day not too far away, will surely be calling.
