Since this quote never gets old, here is what Johnny Marr said on the matter of people who film at live concerts: "They are dicks".
Now that I got this off my chest, a few words about Fontaines DC's recent concert at a Warsaw club called Proxima. Somehow, Fontaines DC had always been a band I wanted to see live. There was something about their brand of literate post-punk that simply had to translate well to strong live performances. And on June 13, I came away with ears bleeding - but I came away content.
There is an unspoken rule about club concerts: you do not complain about the sound quality. I did once, back in 2006 in London, when I saw a friend's band perform at the once legendary but now defunct Madame Jojo's club in Soho. As we walked out onto the sleepless pavements of London night, he asked me my opinion and I said the songs were probably okay but they could hardly come through the horrendous sound that made everything come off muffled and meaningless. "But", he said - curing me of my high expectations once and for all, "clubs always have appalling sound". Over the years, there have been a few exceptions (Cold Specks sounded excellent in Ampere in Munich - which may have been the effect of German absinthe), but mostly it has been the rule. It is not about the sound. It is not even about the songs. In a club... it is all about charisma.
Fontaines DC have it. You knew it the moment they walked onto the stage and the singer, the sort of exuberant Ian Curtis in a football T-shirt, started pacing the stage in a manner of someone who was trying to psyche himself up. A recent Uncut interview betrayed a certain degree of self-consciousness but his stage antics are powerful and hypnotic. No words beyond a brief and lonesome 'thank you' were spoken between the songs, and I have never had a problem with it. Choosing between saying too much and saying too little, I would always go for the latter.
Unsurprisingly, the highlights were from the last album. "Big Shot" sounded gutsy, "Jackie Down The Line" sounded like the high-octane single that it really is and "Roman Holiday" had the sort of guitar line that could work in any club. Only "Nabokov", the song I had been anticipating the most, did not quite measure up. "Nobokov" is utter perfection in its studio form so the murkiness did not really become it. It has to be perfect or nothing at all. Other than that, there was little I could criticise here. After all, with everyone in the club getting absolutely raving mad, it would have been too insensitive of me to demand "No" or "Dublin City Sky". I was happy to get "Boys In The Better Land" for an encore, though, as I had almost forgotten what a great song that is.
Interesting for a band who started out with a two-minute single titled "Big", Fontaines DC are actually getting quite big now. There is a huge tour bus, there is a performance at Glastobury later this month, there are millions of views on YouTube, and there is a certain monumental sound to their latest album that means they know exactly where they are now and they are embracing the moment. There is also a desperate battalion of Polish fans screaming 'we love you' as Fontaines DC charge into the final song of the evening. Titled, handily, "I Love You". It is a special song, and should be the perfect closer for them for many years to come. It is a bitter love letter to Ireland, with lyrics good to enough to overshadow the inevitable fact that they are all living in London now.
