When stags appear on mountains high
With flanks the colour of tawny brown
And a badger bold bids you good morn
A pint of plain is your only man
And so the words of Brian O’Nolan would came to pass when Fontaínes D.C. brought their mythical Irish stag Skinty Fia to Australia.
Originally booked to tour Australia in 2020 with debut album Dogrel before cancelling and then cancelling some more. Tonight’s the night they deliver on their promise. Only now they have grown into a Finn MacCoolesque rock behemoth. With not one but three albums in their belly.
They start to tumultuous applause with A Lucid Dream:
I was there
When the rain changed direction
And fled to play tricks with your hair, overlooking them, there
And it’s all coming back
And you’re prowling the track, like a cat on the back of a chair…
Lead singer Grian Chatten is that cat in dark sunglasses. However he is not prowling the back of a chair but rather the top of the foldback speaker. Straining ever higher and ever forwards into he audience – a man becoming a giant.
The words flow endlessly on a river of sound. Sha Sha Sha has the crowd singing and dancing and moshing and surfing. The three year wait worth every minute. The band is big guitars and big bass with drum riff after drum riff. Unfortunately guitarist Carlos O’Donnel didn’t make the trip due to the impending birth of his first child. No matter, for in the words of Carlos: “We have found a modified vacuum cleaner that has settings just right for most of the songs.”
That vacuum cleaner is called Cathal from Irish band The Altered Hours and I reckon he nailed those weird distorted settings. Songs like Big Shot, How Cold Love Is and Jackie Down The Line have become Covid anthems. Song Nabokov no longer a deep cut but rather a masterpiece of snarling, menacing Irish brogue. They end the encore with I Love You a song that surfaces the other side of the sea or ocean from The Pogues Thousands Are Sailing.
I Love You could be Irish convicts in Sydney in 1778 . But it is a universal song that is so beautiful in its crippling estrangement.
The music of Fontaínes D.C. embrace guitar bands past present and emerging but their heady atmosphere and turn of phrase are for the eons.
Fontaínes D.C. played at the Roundhouse Sydney.
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