Fontaines D.C at Øya 2019

Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. brought a short but sweet injection of poetic punk to the Fortum stage at Øya on Thursday evening.

I slightly feared the crowd was going to be a little thin for Fontaines D.C.’s Thursday set at Øya. For one thing, the last time the Irish quintet played in Oslo – late January at the tiny underground venue Revolver – hardly anyone showed up.

At that time, the band had received a decent amount of hype across much of Europe and the US for their impressive live shows and a few great single releases. Although that hype hadn’t fully hit Oslo before the band’s Revolver show, the crowd of 40-or-so experienced first hand why so many people were predicting big things for Fontaines D.C. in 2019.

An Unfortunate clash

The second factor weighing against a good attendance for the band was an unfortunate slot on the festival program – a direct clash with Norwegian national treasure Sigrid over on the Amfiet stage. Although the two artists don’t exactly cross over in terms of target audience. The fact that basically EVERYONE at Øya on Thursday seemed to be heading over to Amfiet shortly before 18:45 didn’t bode well for Fontaines D.C.

Fortunately, my fears about the audience were unfounded. Everyone who wasn’t a big Sigrid fan appeared to think Fontaines D.C. were worth a go – clearly the hype has now reached Norway. This is no doubt helped by the critical acclaim the band’s debut album Dogrel received when it was released in April, including a recent nomination for the highly acclaimed Mercury prize album of the year.

A range of styles

The band open with one of their early singles and live favourite «Too Real». A fast-paced driving rock anthem that gets heads nodding in the crowd. The band blast through tracks on Dogrel without rest, exhibiting the range of styles contained within the album. From the slower punk-ballad sadness of «Roy’s Tune», to the pop chords of “Sha Sha Sha» and the riff-heavy «Hurricane Laughter», that gets a small group at the front of the crowd jumping around.

The band members don’t engage much with the audience. The only exception is when front man Grian Chatten uses some basic sign language to request a lighter from someone on the front row. Indeed, cigarettes represent a major component of the Fontaines D.C. onstage persona, which owes a lot the motionless, chain-smoking, sunglasses-wearing punk stars of the past. The one exception is Chatten, who paces around the stage with an anxious intensity and occasional stamp or fist-pump, often bringing to mind a young Ian Curtis.

A great show, but too short

The one negative to the band’s show at Revolver in January was that, at 35 minutes, it felt too short. Unfortunately, the same problem returns today. Despite their allocated festival slot of 50 minutes, the set suddenly finishes after just over half an hour. It isn’t entirely clear if this is due to a technical issue or otherwise, but with an almost apologetic “We’re gonna have to go now, cheers” from Chatten, the band disappear from the stage.

You get the feeling a fair number of people in the crowd are a bit disappointed at the early exit. Oslo will have to wait a little longer for its next injection of Fontaines D.C., but the hype has definitely arrived.

Alle foto: Johannes Andersen