You can hear Grian Chatten before you see him. Rumbling chords ring out and a pale green spotlight falls on an empty stage. Just before the starting pistol fires on Fontaines D.C.’s biggest Glastonbury set to date, the frontman waits for the applause to simmer before slowly stepping into a single beam of light. His typically earthy vocal sounds eerily low during opener ‘Romance’, rasping and scratching like a glass of orange juice hitting a sore throat. Having spent his career confounding audiences, now Chatten seeks to do so in a kilt and stomping boots; eyes fixed on a stately new era for his band.
Though the Dublin-formed five-piece have always sung of transformation, tonight (June 29), their songs old and new feel pointedly connected to a fresh surge of energy. Beyond a recent collective decision to action a total cyber-punk wardrobe refresh and book repeat hair dye appointments, their music feels more swaggering, brutal and cryptic than ever before. By the time we reach ‘Starburster’, Chatten has smudged his eyeliner from dragging his palms down his face, barely hiding the vulnerability and rage inside a song that feels reminiscent of a sudden panic attack.
When the band first arrived at Worthy Farm in 2019, they slogged through several rapid-fire, often last-minute shows, filling in for a Sam Fender set cancellation and surprise gigs. Three years later, they returned to play the career-elevating ‘Skinty Fia’ in its near-entirety, with the support of a vast string section. This evening, tracks from across their entire discography are given proper weight and colour, showing growth from their loud but more bashful and insecure earlier days (‘Sha Sha Sha’, an ever-muscular ‘Boys In The Better Land’) through to the near-intimidatingly assured act we see on stage now.
Skipping in circles around his mic as though it’s a maypole, Chatten storms through a breathless ‘Televised Mind’, inspiring Fontaines D.C. football chants from the packed Park Stage crowd. The rest of the band are also heroically, if more subtly committed to the melodrama: guitarists Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley never flinch from massive musical climaxes (‘Big Shot’, ‘Nabakov’), while drummer Tom Coll and bassist Conor ‘Deego’ Deegan carry the rhythm section through an assault course of sudden shifts in pace and intensity.
It’s the audience who bring unexpected moments of levity. Flares, bubble guns and fistfuls of confetti fill the sky, but it’s a mighty singalong to ‘I Love You’ – a song that traverses generational trauma and issues affecting the modern Irish diaspora – that brings everyone together. Tears are shed and vocal cords strained, yes, but there’s a shared understanding that there may be teenagers here experiencing the full guts and potency of guitar music for the first time, as well many older fans feeling reinvigorated by this emotional spectacle.
Chatten, as ever, barely utters a word of stage chat, communicating instead through a quiet tenacity. “But if there was lightning in me / You’d know who it was for,” he bellows during new single ‘Favourite’, aiming for the heart and hitting the bullseye.
Fontaines D.C. Glastonbury setlist was:
‘Romance’
‘Jackie Down The Line’
‘Televised Mind’
‘Roman Holiday’
‘Big Shot’
‘Chequeless Reckless’
‘A Hero’s Death’
‘Big’
‘Nabokov’
‘How Cold Love Is’
‘A Lucid Dream’
‘Sha Sha Sha’
‘Boys In The Better Land’
‘I Love You’
‘Favourite’
‘Starburster’
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