MUSIC PREMIERES
You may have seen that meme about how slapping a ‘Directed by David Lynch’ sticker on your window helps this bewildering world make a little more sense. It’s that same prism that Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. view the shitshow through. Arriving to their take on ‘In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)’ from Eraserhead mashed up with a ghostly stripped-back ‘Starburster’, the band drag Finsbury Park’s 45,000-strong crowd through the screen and into the surreal.
The acid, neon and sci-fi of 2024’s ‘Romance’ is a world of its own. As Amy Taylor of support act Amyl And The Sniffers puts it, “Fontaines, especially their last album, remind me of how it feels to be alive today, which is really fucking confusing”. She points specifically to the profound ‘Modern World’ as a soundtrack to these times of horror fatigue and livestreaming atrocities.
That universe is reflected in today’s line-up and their actions – soulful, fierce and independent acts. The fight for Palestine dominates the day, not least from Kneecap (who Fontaines frontman Grian Chatten joins for the cutting polemic ‘Better Way To Live’) and it’s a cause shared by the flag-baring, freedom-calling crowd.
Fontaines are among their people. When they arrive on stage, they’ve got that something that the best bands do – they look like a gang that you want to be part of, and you can. The crowd, dressed in their Bohemian F.C. shirts, continue Fontaines’ anime street gang aesthetic, its brash colours the makeshift uniform of a subculture.
From the acidic sleaze of ‘Here’s The Thing’ through to the punky promise of ‘Boys In The Better Land’ and the recent sunset single of ‘It’s Amazing To Be Young’ feeling like a warm hug at a lock-in, Fontaines are absolutely on one. Chatten stomps the runway, having grown into a fearsome frontman, while Conor ‘Deego’ Deegan III proves the cool anchor of the band, Conor Curley the mystique, Tom Coll the heartbeat, and Carlos O’Connell the wild card.
Highs come with the holler back for that stuttering refrain “Shit / Shit / Shit / Battered” on ‘Death Kink’, the gothic swamp of newbie ‘Before You I Just Forget’, and the Deftones K-hole of ‘Desire’. ‘A Hero’s Death’, ‘Big’, ‘Hurricane Laughter’, ‘Favourite’ and “that violent, ‘How do you do?’” of the stonking ‘Liberty Belle’ continue to incite mosh pits – then we hit peak Lynch.
Images of warped faces, creepy hallways and a two-headed, double-ended, red-eyed pig greet us through snowglobes. “Maybe romance is a place,” offers Chatten, returning for the encore. It is here in Finsbury Park tonight. The “selling genocide” line from ‘I Love You’ lands a sledgehammer blow when the screens declare “Israel is committing genocide, use your voice” to rapturous support, before we end on that short-sharp inhale of “momentary-blissness” with ‘Starburster’.
The show doesn’t hit the same as their dumbfounding ‘Romance’ launch at Glastonbury 2024 or the drama and theatrics of their Ally Pally show last year, but this feels more like a victory lap and proves that the band can totally lay waste to a show of this size.
Their first London show was just around the corner at The Finsbury pub to about 20 people. Now here we are. Headlining Finsbury Park has led to epic folklore gigs by the likes of Pulp, Oasis, New Order and Arctic Monkeys. They more than deserve to be listed among them. They are the most important band of this decade. They’ll headline Reading & Leeds in no time, and maybe Glastonbury needs that fallow year to take a very deep breath and prepare for a Fontaines takeover.
‘Here’s the Thing’
‘Jackie Down the Line’
‘Boys in the Better Land’
‘Televised Mind’
‘Roman Holiday’
‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’
‘Big Shot’
‘Death Kink’
‘A Hero’s Death’
‘Before You I Just Forget’
‘Motorcycle Boy’
‘Horseness Is the Whatness’
‘Big’
‘Bug’
‘Hurricane Laughter’
‘Nabokov’
‘Desire’
‘Favourite’
‘Liberty Belle’
Encore:
‘Romance’
‘In the Modern World’
‘I Love You’
‘Starburster’
After first rising to prominence with the expansive, 1980s-inspired dream-pop of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and its standout tracks, Ethel Cain has spent much of her artistic journey trying to step away from that sound. She’s leaned into a moodier mix of drone, ambient rock, and raw analogue textures. “I’m not a fucking pop artist,” the Tallahassee singer once told The FADER, adding, “I reject that wholeheartedly.” Her experimental projects ‘Perverts’ and ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’ make that stance very clear, and her latest tour often feels like a firm break from the softer sounds that brought her into the spotlight.
For the first of her five headline nights at Hammersmith Apollo, Hayden Anhedönia builds a scene that feels like a slightly playful, gently eerie B-movie graveyard. She spends most of the performance tucked inside a moss-covered altar, surrounded by dramatic lighting and a crucifix mic stand. The show is nearly silent when it comes to onstage chatter. The rare moments she does address the audience are understated and easy to miss. When a fan shouts their love for her, she responds with a simple “Thank you!” from the darkness.
Instead of walking the stage to build energy, the lighting design carries that weight, mirroring the intensity of her songs. During the gritty, heavy ‘Dust Bowl’, she sings inside a slowly circling beam of light that sweeps across the Apollo with piercing brightness, while strobing green and white lights heighten the tension during long instrumental passages.
Ethel Cain. Credit: Connie Burke
As the warm, rough-edged guitars of ‘Knock At The Door’ fill the room, the production shows it can match the strange, atmospheric side of Cain’s catalogue, even if those moments are rare tonight. The set doesn’t lean heavily on ‘Perverts’, but brief pieces of ‘Houseofpsychoticwomn’ and the title track make their way in. The industrial ballad ‘Vacillator’ appears in full, bathed in stark white light as she softly sings, “If you love me, keep it to yourself,” on a track heavy with buried emotion.
For the most part, the night is devoted to ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’. The album slows the cinematic Southern Gothic of her debut ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and explores the dizzying pull of a teenage love triangle. The shimmering synths of ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ and the lush strings of ‘Nettles’ bring an early glow, before the performance drifts into hazy ambient dream-rock reminiscent of Grouper. The mood is thick and steady, though it lacks big shifts in dynamics, leaving the set on a single emotional wavelength.
When ‘Tempest’ is briefly stopped and restarted so medics can help an audience member, ‘Waco, Texas’ follows as the main set closer. The encore then pivots toward older material, shifting the tone entirely. After a heartfelt ‘A House in Nebraska’, Anhedönia steps out from behind her green altar for the first and last time, moving into the brighter side of her discography with ‘Crush’ and ‘American Teenager’. Even though she has expressed discomfort with her most well-known tracks, their contrast with her darker material gives the finale a powerful lift. After holding the room in quiet tension for so long, their arrival feels like a release that lands with even greater impact.
