August 24, Little John's Farm: the band of the moment mix aching melancholia with ragged indie bangers. The result is magical Fontaines D.C.
‘s Conor Curley, clad in wraparound shades, thrums a menacing, barebones bassline. Alone on the stage, he looks like a ‘90s grunge icon. Carlos O’Connell, his hair a flash of pink and his jacket a pop of leopard print, joins him, taps out a skeletal keyboard refrain, learns into a mic and mimics the voice of an explosion.
The sound is distorted, warped, flooding the stage, before frontman Grian Chatten appears in a neon-green jacket to croon insidiously through ‘Romance’, the title track from the band’s game-changing new album . READ MORE: At home with Fontaines D.C.
’s Grian Chatten: “Our personality is bigger than the sound that we make” It’s a curious way to begin a Main Stage set that serves as a marker-point in the five-piece’s ongoing ascension to all-time greatness, but the sprawling crowd is an indication that Fontaines D.C. have pulled off the rare coup of reaching a mass audience while creating ever-more singular and experimental music.
At one point, Chatten looks motionlessly out to the sprawling sea of fans. He doesn’t look overawed or cocky; he looks like nothing less than a tiger coolly regarding a gazelle. Later, the singer goes in for the kill: he throws his hands out to the audience, conjuring cheers and applause, and batters a tambourine as if channelling his inner Liam Gallagher .
In a recent blo.