Their latest album, Romance, showed the five-piece going from strength to strength and a pair of sold-out gigs at the 3Arena cap an outstanding year
Upward trajectory: Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC performing at Reading Festival this year. Photo: Simone Joyner/Getty Images
Adam Levine of the US pop-rock outfit Maroon 5 was scoffed at when he wondered some years back why there “aren’t any bands any more”. Of course there are bands — lots of them — but his point was they weren’t capturing the zeitgeist the way they used to. The charts are full of solo pop and hip-hop acts now, whereas once it was bands that ruled the roost.
Richard Osman, on his hugely popular The Rest is Entertainment podcast, made the startling observation this summer that in this decade so far, bands have occupied the UK number one spot for just three weeks in total — and one of those groups was the Beatles.
