Reading and Leeds 2024: Watch Fontaines D.C. perform ‘Favourite’
To cap off a successful week following the release of their new album, Romance, Fontaines D.C. took to the Main Stage at Reading Festival on August 24th and made their bid to headline the festival in the future.
Despite being four albums deep now, Fontaines D.C. have evolved with each and every release and hit new heights on the James Ford-produced, Romance. As they showed during their set, new songs such as ‘Favourite’ and ‘Starburster’ prove that the Dublin five-piece now have the tools in their arsenal for arenas as well as the biggest outdoor stages.
While it’s a similar billing on the festival that they received in 2022, it’ll be a crying shame if Fontaines’ next outing at Reading isn’t after the sun has set. As the British festival scene is desperately crying out for more young headliners to stop the regurgitation of the same handful of names, perhaps the answer is already in front of their eyes.
In a four-and-a-half star review of Romance, Far Out wrote: “If a blistering show at Glastonbury and the three records that preceded it hadn’t already cemented Fontaines as the most exciting guitar band in the world, Romance certainly does.”
The praise for Romance continued: “If you can’t find romance in a place or a person, maybe you can find it in this record, at a Fontaines show, or in the tender writings of Chatten, but for those aboard the bandwagon, the hype is powered up once more.”
On Romance, Fontaines D.C. look ahead to their evolution, whether this be through their newly-adopted cyberpunk aesthetic or on the futuristic sounds of ‘Starburster’, but the decision to close the record with ‘Favourite’ is a reminder of their roots.
If the summer of 2024 could be bottled up within a song, it’s ‘Favourite’. While it’s an anomaly when listened to in the context of Romance, it was made for the Main Stage at Reading Festival during the last weekend of the festival season before the impending bleak winter approaches.
For those who weren’t fortunate enough to capture Fontaines at Reading or Leeds this weekend, they will be heading back out on tour across the United Kingdom and Ireland later this year. The jaunt includes two hometown shows at the 3Arena in Dublin, as well as two concerts at London’s Alexandra Palace and a visit to The SSE Hydro in Glasgow.
Other acts still set to perform at Reading Festival across the weekend include headline sets from Lana Del Rey and Fred Again on August 24th before the festival is closed by Liam Gallagher on August 25th. The former Oasis frontman is set to play the band’s seminal album, Definitely Maybe, in its entirety.
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