Gig Review: Fontaines D.C. @ Shed 6, Wellington, 29 January 2023

During a weekend where extreme weather events saw the cancellation of mid-summer gigs and events right across Aotearoa – most notably in Auckland where Elton John was (twice) cancelled and the popular Laneway Festival belatedly canned – it was of some relief that Sunday night’s Wellington leg of the Fontaines D.C. Australasian tour went ahead without any disruption.

 It helped of course, that the Irish band’s gig was scheduled at an indoor venue, Shed 6, on Wellington’s waterfront. Although to be fair, the weather in the capital city – sporadic showers – was in no way as catastrophic as the torrential rain Auckland and the far north was battered with. Flooding was so severe, a Civil Defence State of Emergency remained in place in Auckland across the entire weekend and beyond. Whisper it, but the word is, there’s more to come.

Having been relieved of Monday Laneway duties, there was a sense that the Fontaines were doubly keen to whip up a storm of their own in the capital, and that’s exactly what they achieved. With a 90-minute onslaught of pure state-of-the-art post-punk. The band reeling off a set which covered most of the key tracks from each of their three album releases to date.

There was a brief but poignant blast of Television – in tribute to the newly departed Tom Verlaine (R.I.P.) – just before the band arrived on stage, sans regular guitarist Carlos O’Connell, who is on “expectant dad” duties, replaced on this trip to the antipodes by The Altered Hours’ guitarist Cathal MacGabhann.

A terrific opening double whammy of ‘A Lucid Dream’ and ‘A Hero’s Death’, off the band’s 2020 album of the same name, set the scene rather nicely, before a run through highlights like ‘Sha Sha Sha’, ‘I Don’t Belong’, and ‘How Cold Love Is’, propelled us to something of a mid-set peak featuring a raucous ‘Televised Mind’ and ‘Jackie Down the Line’.

 Personal favourite ‘Roman Holiday’ offered another mini peak ten minutes later, by which time I’d abandoned the heaving throng closer to the stage for a sedate spot with more breathing room somewhere near the back – the venue was at about ninety percent capacity, if not fully sold out, and it was uncomfortably hot and sticky once the band were in full flight and the crowd fully engaged.

A punked-up take on ‘Nabokov’ followed, before an equally snotty version of ‘Too Real’ notionally closed the show … but you just knew there was going to be an encore, nobody was leaving, and naturally Fontaines D.C. were able to oblige with a couple of hitherto overlooked bangers in the form of Dogrel favourite ‘Boys in the Better Land’, and ‘I Love You’, off last year’s Skinty Fia album.

The band was tight throughout (makeshift guitarist and all), driven by a take-no-prisoners rhythm section, and in the form of Grian Chatten, the Fontaines have a front man who one hundred percent believes every single word he throws at you in that unmistakable and rather compelling thick Southern Irish brogue.

 Chatten kept interaction with the crowd at a minimal level (ie. barely at all) and whilst there will have been many in the crowd who prefer a band to connect with idle banter, I personally think there was enough of a stage presence about the undeniably charismatic Chatten, who bounces around not unlike a nervous child on the first day of pre-school, to still make a firm connection. And really, why bother with obligatory conventional triggers when the mostly unconventional music largely speaks for itself?

The support was provided by local indie rockers Wiri Donna, who played a short set of solid tunes from their recent EP plus the odd new track. I’d like to see them again, if only for the hugely entertaining bass player, who's in-the-moment facial expressions and (mock?) rock-star posing was a joy to behold.

Photos: Thanks to @nothingelseon for the pics.