Fontaines DC at Exhibition Park: Irish post-punks become the 104th band to save rock ‘n’ roll
Back in 2014, Alex Turner tested the weak jaws of the nation with a speech that has incorrectly been dubbed the cringiest in history by critics who evidently mustn’t have been at John and Marie’s wedding, when the Arctic Monkeys frontman said, “That rock ‘n’roll, eh? That rock’n’roll, it just won’t go away. It might hibernate from time to time, and sink back into the swamp. I think the cyclical nature of the universe in which it exists demands it, adheres to some of its rules. But it’s always waiting there, just around the corner.”
Though the delivery may have been quirky, there was more than a grain of truth to the quiffed frontman’s proclamation, and Fontaines DC are now well-established as the 104th band to prove his point.
England were toppling wickets in the cricket, Wimbledon was in full swing, and the sun was baking beer gardens with more favourable pint prices than any event can compete with, but still, the masses marched up from the city to Exhibition Park bright and early on Sunday afternoon to catch the Irish post-punk’s curated outdoor concert with English Teacher and Crows in support.
The tree-lined park was full to its 10,000 capacity, with the bold choice of venue itself proving to be a daring decision that typifies the vitality of the group. Perhaps it is no news to anybody, but watching a crowd dominated by youngsters revel in the halcyon midsummer haze of live music, it was reaffirmed for all to see that Fontaines DC are the latest young artists to proverbially save guitar music.
“None can pull the passion loose from youth’s ungrateful hands,” they sang as they first emerged with ‘Too Real’ back in 2019, but in a few short years, they have proved that they themselves can rouse the passions of the youth, fulfilling the promise that they made back then that they were “gonna be big”.
That was far from the typical remark any band was making during the pre-pandemic post-punk era. It’s not that there was a shortage of great groups, as Alex Turner suggests, there’s always plenty of them about, lingering in the indie shadows; it is just that a general malaise had set in that seemed to signal that things were not as they once were in the world of guitars.
Fontaines DC have prised the pomp of rock ‘n’ roll back out of the mire, asserting themselves as the headliners Glastonbury have shockingly missed, and sent that dour mentality that the glory days of the guitar have been and gone back to the swamp. And they have done this by joyously embracing youth culture in a gorgeously wholehearted way.
Throughout the day in Exhibition Park, more and more youngsters parted with a very hefty sum of cash to get their hands on a football jersey-style piece of band merch that sports the following phrase beneath the back collar: “I thought it was love”. A lyricist of Grian Chatten’s class will certainly not be unaware that such a line has a certain soppy, year 11 diary quality to it. It’s borderline cheesy. But it also comes from the same spirited, unguarded place as ‘She Loves You’, ‘Teenage Kicks’, ‘Last Nite’ and ‘Mardy Bum’ before it—all triumphant tracks that wrestled a revolution of sorts free from the grips of the youth’s ungrateful hands.
Beneath the baking sunshine, it became increasingly clear that the same sort of rock ‘n’ roll rebirth was unfurling once more. Their set is now jam-packed with hits and diversity. But it wasn’t just the music that got the masses moving; akin to the great stars of old, the band used their platform to promote just causes, calling for a “Free Palestine”. They made reference to their friend Sam Fender, dedicating his favourite Fontaines DC song ‘Bug’ to the local hero. They looked, sounded and swaggered like a band with a defined purpose. And throughout the course of their 21-song set, they proved so constantly engaging that I didn’t even bother attempting to acquire enough signal to check the final cricket score. In fact, it only crossed my mind twice.
Usually, those intrusive thoughts are commonplace when you attend countless concerts as part of how you make a living. But there was something unique about the upheaval that Fontaines DC uprooted from a sleepy Sunday. It’s not that I haven’t been to better gigs or seen better performances, but it’s very rare that I’ve attended anything that so readily brought to mind the old Buffalo Springfield, revolution heralding lyric: “There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear”.
While the present youth culture zeitgeist might be murky, it’s clear that Fontaines DC are already big. The next promise that seems predestined is that they’re ‘gonna be very big’. That won’t happen by accident, either. Beyond the blitzkrieg of bangers that they have in their baggy back pockets, they’ve skillfully orchestrated their rise to the zenith of rock ‘n’ roll better than anyone in recent times.
Saying the right things with sincerity, switching up genres and styles, even serving the right merch and aesthetic, and above all, proclaiming that the kids are alright, boldly stating, “It’s amazing to be young” in a manner that obviously resonates with a mass of youth that haven’t heard anything like that for some time.
