It’s become almost a biennial Christmas tradition: Fontaines DC return to Dublin to play a couple of shows as December rolls in. In 2019, the year their debut album Dogrel came out, they played a pair of shows at Vicar Street, their star very much on the rise.
Three years later, in 2022, it was three shows capping off A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia – we said then that they were a band to pin your hopes on. Two years later, they’re back again, but this time in the much larger environs of the 3Arena, playing to a total of about 28,000 people over Friday and Saturday.
It’s all on the back of fourth record Romance, which is garnering album of the year gongs from near and far. It’s big, bright, and their best yet.
Arriving shortly after fellow DC baby Kojaque’s ‘Larry Bird’ was floating around the arena, they play behind a sheet, for the slow buzz of the title track opener, which drops as bugeye-sunglasses-wearing frontman Grian Chatten pronounces: “Maybe romance is a place for me and you.”
This must be the place for the following 90 minutes-plus, the five-piece, aided by an additional live member on keys, blasting through hits old and new.
It’s hard not to think of scenes at Oasis gigs in the mid-1990s, as they reel off the likes of ‘Jackie Down the Line’ and ‘Big’, the crowd jumping and falling around in unison, arms around each other shouting back the lyrics. ‘Roman Holiday’ even kicks off with a guitar line Noel Gallagher would be jealous of.
Fontaines DC do have that indelible connection with the heaving crowd. Chatten, as is his wont, stomps around the stage and shows off his vocal strength on ‘Nabokov’ and the scintillating ‘I Love You’, but in terms of audience interaction do you need more than the “Welcome home” he offers up about 30 minutes in?
The singer also says ‘Free Palestine!” before performing ‘Horseness in the Whatness’; Fontaines have adorned their keyboard with a Palestinian flag and there are chants in solidarity from the crowd too, as well as the de rigeur ‘Ole Ole Ole’.
Fontaines released a record with Young Fathers and Massive Attack in the summer in support of Medecins Sans Frontieres’ emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank, and this week the Irish band released a new Bohemians jersey collaboration for the same cause. They have backed up their words with real action.
And you sense they’re happy for the songs to do the talking. ‘Boys in the Better Land’ sounds as good as ever, and it feels like the 3Arena is about to take off, but it’s the triumvirate of ‘Favourite’, ‘In The Modern World’, and closer ‘Starburster’ — all off Romance — which stand out most.
If the former is reminiscent of 1990s Irish indie bands such as Whipping Boy, the latter, with its panic attack-like inhales, sounds like a thrillride you won’t want to get off of. Who knows where it’ll take Fontaines DC by the time December 2026 rolls around…
