Review
Review
Fontaines D.C. and friends balance music and politics beautifully in Finsbury Park
The Dubliners were joined by Amyl and the Sniffers, Kneecap and more for their biggest headline show yet
“I learnt a lot of politics through music, it doesn’t mean nothing” admits Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor during a breather on stage at Finsbury Park at the weekend. “I didn’t even wash my hands with soap but now I do. You can learn and you can join movements and you can make change, so f*ck yeah!”
It’s a line, delivered with Taylor’s characteristic double jab of self-deprecating humour and blunt sincerity, that captures the spirit of the day while relieving a kind of tension that has arisen in the last few weeks as the butting of music and politics reaches a boiling point. 45,000 of us are here for the biggest headline show of Fontaines D.C.’s career, just around the corner from the pub in which they played to 30 people at their first London show eight years ago. But this is also more than just a “Look how far they’ve come” type celebration, and everyone knows it; from Greta Thumberg wearing the band’s Bohemian F.C. collab shirt on the Freedom Flotilla, to the band inviting a Palestinian activist group on stage at a recent festival performance, Fontaines D.C. have been among the vanguard of artists showing explicit support for Palestine.
Amy also brings up the band’s song ‘In The World Modern World’, from last year’s Romance. It’s a song that bottles up the generational numbness and apathy that comes from doom scrolling atrocities sandwiched between polarised political opinions on them and some adverts in for good measure. In the Modern World, as Fontaines see it, it can be easy to feel like you’re not doing enough, or to see artists and activist groups being shut down and worry that attending a concert might now be considered political. But their Finsbury Park show strikes a balance beautifully; a show that, as Amy reassures us, can develop a cause and your own position within it without sacrificing a love for the art that brought you here in the first place.
Perhaps Fontaines are able to create this so effectively by giving their bawdy brothers Kneecap room to do a lot of the talking. Just days after Bob Vylan’s highly contentious performance at Glastonbury’s West Holt stage – directly before the Irish trio’s own set, which many, including the Prime Minister, had tried to shut down – there are a lot of bated breaths at what Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí might say this afternoon. All looking a little grey around the gills after what we can only assume has been quite the post-Glasto blowout, Kneecap nevertheless keep the party going with the help of the Finsbury crowd, who shout “Your sniffer dogs are shite” back to them and split into mosh pits throughout, as well as Fontaines’ own Grian Chatten, who struts the catwalk for ‘Better Way To Live.’
But something would be awry if they’d left things at that – yes, even if DJ Próvai does get his Brits out and stage dives on closing ‘The Recap.’ Not to worry: “There’s nothing like embarrassing the British government…” Mo Chara laughs midway through the set before leading chants of “You’re just a sh*t Jeremy Corbyn”. Provocation comes easy to Kneecap, but, in an artistic sense, there is only worth to this if it helps sharpen their sentiment; so it’s a relief when Chara acknowledges how ‘inhumane’ it feels creating soundbites around a humanitarian crisis, adding: “We played in Plymouth last night to 750 people and we did the same thing, so it doesn’t matter how big or small our audience is, Kneecap will always use the platform for talking about this.”
Today, that platform has never felt bigger. After the sage wisdom and revved up punk of Amyl and the Sniffers have egged the crowd on into a fervour, Fontaines D.C. enter as the wailing guitar of ‘Here’s The Thing’ rings and writhes like a trapped snake.
Chatten himself used to flit and fret on the small stages in their debut Dogrel era in the late 2010s, but now, in a kilt and a Sinéad O’Connor t-shirt, he and the band strut with a nonchalant swagger that could only develop from a succession of great albums. If there were any doubt that the Dublin band have achieved this, they do away with with aplomb tonight: on this stage, ‘Boys In The Better Land’ is solidified as a timeless rock classic; ‘A Hero’s Death’ is a mass of catharsis, ‘Televised Mind’ a hypnotic freak out; ‘Favourite’, dedicated to Chatten’s fiancée, is a gooey-sweet aftertaste to the Deftones-esque clout of ‘Desire’.
The stage production is bold but minimalist, with a Palestine flag frequently emblazoned behind the chrome Romance heart backdrop. Fontaines D.C. in Finsbury Park is a ‘Look how far they’ve come’ moment for the band and their fans, and it is also a platform for something bigger. With a focus on sweeping through their hits, the band leave space for fans to appreciate the day for both.
Find tickets to Fontaines D.C. here
