For a while there, it seemed like Australians were never going to get the chance to see Fontaines D.C. live.
Having initially announced their debut Australian tour at the beginning of 2020, (in support of the group’s first album Dogrel,) it has felt like a lifetime of waiting for Melbourne punters eager to see the up-and-coming Irish post-punk outfit.
As you may have imagined, the hype couldn’t have been greater, and with the Grammy-nominated group now on their third album Skinty Fia, fans and the band alike both certainly had a lot of material they were eager to celebrate.
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With an ominous, almost reclusive allure to the group, Fontaine’s hit the stage to masses of applause, giving the audience a subtle nod of recognition before kicking straight into it. Opening with ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo,’ the title track of Skinty, which was written as a dedication to the late Margaret Keane, it was hard not to notice Grain Chatten, the group’s lead singer, who spent the entirety of the song looking up, almost as if he was transfixed on singing it to Keane directly. A deeply moving opening.
With the band wasting no time in talking to the crowd or telling anecdotes in between stories, the group tore through hits like A Hero’s Death, Hurricane Laughter and Sha Sha Sha, all garnering immense receptions from the crowd. With the crowd clearly resonating with some of the group’s more punk rooted back catalog, it was surprisingly the inclusion of newer material that really struck a chord, in particular the title track of the group’s newest album Skinty Fia, which immediately mesmerised the crowd with it’s driving bassline, industrial-esque drum beats and jagged guitar licks.
Older songs ‘I Don’t Belong’ and ‘Chequeless Reckless’ gave way to huge crowd singalongs, as did crowd favourite ‘Big’, which easily ushered in the most intense mosh, and the most intense chants of the night. Stopping to speak to the audience for the first time (40 minutes in), Chatten briefly said “how’re ya?” before blasting straight into Jackie Down The Line, a newer single that surprisingly saw the band perform with three guitars and no bass on stage.
Having rounded out their set with ‘Roman Holiday’ and ‘Nabokov’, Fontaines’ returned to deliver one of the most genuine encores I’d ever seen, with it being quite evident that the crowd couldn’t leave before seeing more.
With Chatten quite often burying his hands into his shirt or even at times in his pocket, maintaining a similar reclusive stage presence to the likes of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, the inclusion of something to hold, namely a tambourine, absolutely transformed him, with the vocalist seemingly coming out of his shell upon reentering the stage to play the group’s lead single ‘Boys In The Better Land’. An energy that maintained for the sets closer ‘I Love You’, which seemingly had every person in attendance belting out the words.
For the fans (like myself) who had been patiently waiting for three years for this show to come to light, it truly was everything we could have expected and more. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take as long for the Dubliners to grace our shores the next time around.
