It's been a decent year for Fontaines DC, it would be fair to say.
After three performances at Glastonbury Festival and a sold out European tour, their critically acclaimed debut album, Dogrel, was named as the best of 2019 by both Rough Trade and BBC Radio 6 Music.
Earlier this year the Irish punk-rockers announced a show at London's O2 Academy in February 2020, but tonight they're at Bristol's SWX - a highly-anticipated gig which sold out months in advance and had countless people desperately trying to source tickets on social media.
Frontman Grian Chatten is restless when he assumes pole position and doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, wringing and shaking them as he paces up and down the stage, before deciding to use them to gee up the crowd, not that anyone really needs it.
They kick off with Hurricane Laughter, unleashing a wall of noise on the venue, and it's not long before a handful of people are haplessly crowd surfing across the room. The stewards have got their work cut out tonight.
The lead singing troubadour's distinct Dublin vocals are less audible than they are on record, understandably given the amount of noise being generated from the musicians around him, but as the song builds the levels improve and they gain added clarity.
Although there's no doubting the album's quality, there are a handful of tracks which could be considered filler rather than killer, namely The Lotts and Chequeless Reckless.
Given that the band's back catalogue stands at just one record for now, they've no choice but to play them, which means the mid-section of the set dips a little in quality following the riotous intro.
But what this does do is allow people some much-needed respite before a barnstorming finale to the set, which includes arguably the song of the year, Boys In The Better Land, and fantastic album opener Big, which has pretty much everyone in SWX yelling "I'm gonna be big," along with Chatten. A memorable moment.
Dublin City Sky, which has shades of The Pogues to it, and Roy's Tune both demonstrate that there's more than one string to the band's bow, and both add a welcome switch-up to proceedings.
There's an awful lot of hype around these precocious Irish lads, but with such an impressive debut album and performances like this, it's fully justified. There will be lots of people eagerly awaiting their next move.
