Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O’Connell sat down with Emma Gleason at The Tuning Fork before their show at Spark Arena. Video / Ben Dickens. Stills / Tom Grut
Review by Emma Gleason
Emma Gleason is the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and media.
Irish band Fontaines D.C returned to Auckland this week, serving up their emotive post-punk bangers to an eager crowd at Spark Arena on Wednesday night. The Herald’s Emma Gleason was there, and spoke to lead guitarist Carlos O’Connell ahead of the show.
Feel dead inside? Going to a Fontaines D.C. show will sort you out.
With another Brit award under their belt and their biggest tour yet in full swing, Dublin band Fontaines D.C made a whistlestop visit to New Zealand this week.
It’s not their first time here – 2023 saw them take the stage in Wellington and Christchurch, Laneway was cancelled – but it does mark their Auckland debut, at Spark Arena no less.
There was a throng of teenagers queued up at the gates when I arrived at 4.20pm to meet lead guitarist Carlos O’Connell at The Tuning Fork - boys in football shirts, girls in big jeans and tiny tops. Hours later, once doors opened, they were joined by other punters of all ages. The range was impressive - everyone loves Fontaines D.C.
“There’s a lot of people listening,” he tells me before the show. “I don’t think I’ve managed to grasp that.”
There’s a universal appeal to their music; categorically post-punk, but influences ranging from The La’s to Korn and James Joyce. They sing about big feelings that we’re all familiar with. Hearing that through your earbuds or speaker is one thing – I’ve had the CD in my car stereo since it hit shelves in August last year – but live it’s a whole other level. The Romance tour is taking the boys from Dublin around the world – everywhere from Mexico to Croatia.
New Zealand gets one date, Auckland. After opening act Shame wraps up – the bill used to be the other way around, Carlos tells me before the show – it’s time for the lads from Dublin.
They’re punctual. Lights dim at 9.03pm and Carlos O’Connell, Tom Coll and Conors Curley and Deegan take the stage, opening with that unctuously sludgy riff of Romance, the first track on the album, before frontman Grian strolls out onto the stage.
“Into the darkness again, in with the pigs in the pen; god knows I love you, screws in my head; I will be beside you till you’re dead.”
Chills, the good kind.
Fontaines D.C. on stage at Auckland's Spark Arena. Photo / Tom Grut
Next, they rewind to their 2021 album Skinty Fia – their third – for the self-loathing of Jackie Down the Line, because who hasn’t felt that?
The tambourine – yes, a tambourine! – comes out for Televised Mind, from 2020’s A Hero’s Death, and then back to Skinty Fia for Roman Holiday.
“Thank you very much,” Grian tells the crowd, his first words of the show. They will be few and far between – brevity rather than banter, because the music speaks for itself.
He’s a pacer, looping around the stage again and again in his baggy T-shirt and dark glasses. When he does stop, more often than not his arms are spread Christlike, and he conducts the crowd with a theatric flick of the wrist. It’s simple but striking – low on ego and peacocking, no gimmicks or nonsense.
Grian commanding the crowd. Photo / Tom Grut
“Everybody gets a big shot, baby,” he sings. Is this theirs? It’s their biggest tour to date. In Dublin, the sold-out December crowd was 14,000 strong. Last week they played in front of the Sydney Opera House. That sold out too.
On stage they’re tight, focused, heads down. For all the aesthetic poptimism of their pink hair, neon clothes and novelty glasses, it’s clear they take this seriously.
Death Kink, one of Romance’s heaviest tracks – its raw lyrics about a toxic relationship will ring true to many – is an even more moving experience live, with its grungy riffs and emotional complexity.
Then rollercoaster of life goes up, and us with it for Sundowner and their newest single, It’s Amazing To Be Young - released only three weeks ago – a beautiful rumination on youth.
It’s one Carlos wanted to talk about before the show, and understandably so.
Notes were picked from his baby daughter’s crying.
“And then that was the lyric Grian came up with, from watching this little thing,” he explained... it’s amazing to be young.
“That’s the purest thing that exists”.
In the arena-scale surrounds, with that sublime light and sound, it’s stunning. After all that hope and brightness, they shift gear and we smash hard into Big, frantic energy and an urgency that comes from being young and wanting more.
It’s from 2019’s Dogrel, their first album. The one that started it all. Carlos wrote it – the title is a James Joyce reference, he’d read his books to his baby daughter.
Carlos O'Connell on stage with Fontaines D.C in Auckland. Photo / Tom Grut
Joyce is back again a few songs (A Hero’s Death, Here’s the Thing, Bug) later, with Horseness Is The Whatness.
The work of the Irish writer is central to the band’s origin story – music college, Dublin City – and mythology.
After Nabakov it’s on to the smashing, pumping Boys in the Better Land. It’s from Dogrel too, and was the first time I heard their music. It stuck.
Grian takes a beat to thank the “amazing” crowd, and Shame, before launching into the bittersweetness of Favourite –singing about a Thatcher-painted town and playing football indoors.
It’s the last song on Romance, and as they walk offstage afterwards it seems to be the last song of the night.
Surely not though, it’s only 10pm. And they haven’t even played the sublime Starburster.
Fans in the front. Some ticketholders waited for hours to get into the venue. Photo / Tom Grut
We wait. There are cries for an encore, clapping, and a refrain of football chants. We’re still waiting, and the house lights are still dark, when they return for not one, but four more.
Big sound and big feelings. In The Modern World soars, then the stage is bathed pink for carnal, wretched, brilliant Desire (the lighting was next-level throughout the show).
Slow and sensual, it grows into a wail, then it’s back to I Love You from Skinty Fia; not a love song, but a berating of capitalism, inequality, and the “gall of Fine Gael”.
The tricolour of green, white and orange illuminate the stage. Fontaines D.C are part of a new generation of Irish dissidence with a long legacy – shared by compatriots like Kneecap.
“No matter where we go and we play shows,” Carlos told me. “There’s Irish flags in the crowd.”
