Fontaines Dc

For those like me who lived through their teenage years in the first half of the 2000s, it can feel dizzying to realize that today, some twenty years on, albums like "Is This It", "Turn On The Bright Lights", "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am Not", "Funeral" and so on are now regarded, to all intents and purposes, as landmark records, often cited as a primary source of inspiration by later generations. For us, as for everyone, history was the past, in some way crystallized and more or less definitively sealed off; what was instead unfolding before our eyes and growing alongside us, we were too busy living to imagine it would one day become someone else's history.

For us kids in the early 2000s, the last (and to us the closest) reference point we granted the honour of "historic status" was probably Nirvana. Kurt Cobain had left us only a few years earlier, and "Nevermind" was younger than our little brothers, yet it had already become the stuff of anthologies, a venerable totem. Perhaps, up until our generation, the recognition of "historic status" (and the resulting aura of legend) was sadly, more often than not, mediated precisely by death; most of the musical idols worshipped between the '60s and the '90s had unfortunately already ended their earthly journey, amid drugs, suicides and lives lived on the edge. All of this inevitably heightened the sense of sanctity surrounding various iconic figures of rock'n'roll, fuelling their cult status. Fortunately, among the artists who rose to fame from the turn of the millennium onward, this funereal tendency has noticeably diminished; perhaps the result of a self-destructive streak that has finally and wisely faded from the new rock world, perhaps a consequence of a certain "intellectualization" at the expense of the "live fast, die young" motto — whatever the reason, most of the bands formed twenty years ago are still going strong. It's probably this very continuity, still intact today, that keeps us from fully grasping the fact that Strokes, Arctic Monkeys and their peers can already be considered "historic" acts (or at least — to put it a touch more modestly — "modern classics"). And yet this is exactly what hindsight, the great captain, tells us; because, after all, history is nothing but something to be told. Something worth telling.

But really, even as we were too caught up arranging to meet in the bathrooms (semi-quote) to the sound of post-punk revival and gin and tonics, were we really not noticing anything? No, that's not true. We noticed plenty — we just didn't have the time or the inclination to worry about it.

With the arrival of "Is This It", everything changed for my generation. That leather glove laid across the curves of a naked body wiped out, in one fell swoop, the worst leftovers of the '90s from our collective imagination — leftovers that, up to that point, still dominated as mass phenomena: the dreadful post-grunge wave, the cheesiest strains of nu metal, the saccharine metamorphosis of pop-punk and emo. The new scene emerging at the time made us reconsider every paradigm: baggy pants gave way to skinny jeans, hoodies to leather jackets, gelled hair to our natural, unkempt look. But above all, that music — which wasn't really new at all, in fact it practically ushered in the age of retromania — gave off vibrations that, for us, truly were new. And they were ours, entirely and completely.

We realized that this was the new course, and that it belonged to us in every sense, above all in the moments we shared: in the records we talked about and swapped at school or university; at the parties where we started dancing to "Reptilia" or "Take Me Out"; at the gigs of those bands where we'd all end up. Sure, at first there weren't many events, and there weren't many of us either — after all, we weren't in the Lower East Side or Shoreditch. It was precisely this small-scale dimension that made it hard to foresee that, a couple of decades later, we'd look back on that moment as a defining generational shift (even though those same bands, who rarely came to play in Italy and mostly in small-to-medium venues, were already headlining Glastonbury or Reading). And yet, somehow, we could still feel that the future was passing through right there — right where we were too.

Now that the future is past (and we've noticed, to twist another quote), we can see that time has essentially proven us right. The legacy of that wave is widely recognised as a cornerstone of contemporary music history. And it has left those of us who grew up with it plenty of stories to tell. Even today, though, perhaps clouded by a natural sense of nostalgia that keeps pulling us back to when we were sixteen, eighteen or twenty and the Arctic Monkeys were simply a new promise, we still struggle to digest the fact that that period has, in a sense, already been consigned to history. It's strange, even though we'd always known, somewhere in the back of our minds, that it would happen.

So, as I head towards forty, I can't help wondering which bands from today's new scene are destined to go down in the history books; how today's twenty-somethings are experiencing them, and how they'll be viewed in 2040 or 2050. How my daughter – who's in nursery school today – will see them and hear about them once she comes of age.

To the first question I tend to give myself a fairly obvious answer, considering Fontaines Dc and Idles the standard-bearers of the very latest rock generation, in a very broad sense. Beyond the undeniable reputation of these two bands, and while I'm fully convinced of the claim, I like to make things complicated for myself, so I ask: why do Fontaines Dc and Idles matter today? Are they doing anything new and revolutionary? Probably not. Call it post-post-punk, a revival of the revival, or whatever you like, and you'd be more or less right (setting aside how pointless these convoluted labels are). There's undoubtedly a derivative side to them, and yet it's the personality of Fontaines and Idles that wins out over the sheer citation, cementing them over the last five years as the artists most capable of renewing the language of alternative-leaning rock in the way most credible and consistent with the present era, with a capacity for reinvention and a growing artistic quality across the long arc of their discography – whereas most of the heroes of early-2000s neo-indie, after explosive debut albums, had already started showing signs of weakness and a certain depletion of ideas by their third record.

Do Fontaines Dc and Idles represent the roots of a new movement? Not that either. Even though they are, without a shadow of a doubt, the beacons of the new alternative guard (still thriving in more niche contexts), they aren't leading a mass trend comparable to the one that developed two decades ago, capable of moving from the underground to mainstream fashion (oh, if at a certain point everyone became "indie", that's where it started from). It's actually the times that have changed radically; in a historical moment that shows us how rock in general has fallen out of the limelight of – precisely – mass glory, with pop occupying all the vital spaces that once belonged to rock (from media impact on the very young to a presence at major festivals, even down to political endorsements), Fontaines Dc and Idles represent a kind of proud resistance, romantic commanders of an army of rediscovered desaparecidos who stubbornly insist on reasserting their place in the world, alive and not merely surviving.

All this, however, isn't enough to find an answer to the second question: what will these bands leave behind for the young and very young of today and tomorrow? To answer that, we need to set aside a cold approach of analysis and critical observation, and venture into the emotional sphere. And emotion can't come solely from listening to a record and from the knowledge gathered between the web and magazines; emotion needs to be lived fully in the sharing of it, in the feeling (whether conscious or naive) that what's happening is somehow changing us collectively, however far that extends being not all that important. And it's impossible to live and perceive that emotion from outside the field.

A twenty-something who regularly goes to gigs and various happenings has probably already had certain feelings in their bones for a while now, just as we, the last of the millennials, sensed from the very start what was happening to us in the early 2000s. And yet, the me of today, who now spends most evenings watching cartoons and playing with his daughter, couldn't quite grasp these feelings. In short, I couldn't decode the real scale, in terms of generational impact, of today's champions.

To understand it took, precisely, a genuine moment of shared experience. A concert: Fontaines Dc at the Auditorium in Rome. Actually, I'd already tried to go and see the Irish band a couple of times before. Tickets bought and then resold, due to work and family commitments that came up. On 25 June 2024 I finally managed it without a hitch.

Perhaps, in a way, the timing turned out to be perfect: Fontaines Dc are now living through a peak moment of hype, ready (with an average age among the members not even reaching thirty) to release a fourth album that, judging by the singles put out so far, already promises to be excellent and a worthy follow-up to three wonderful records. Seeing them today means finding yourself in front of a band fully in command of its own means, though they've undeniably been exceptional since their 2018 debut. That's certainly important, but it's not the main point, nor am I here to recount the gig itself. This isn't a live report; suffice it to say the performance was magnificent, powerful and intense, with a perfectly chosen setlist and a magnetic stage presence (if you want to know more, you can find the full report here). What I want to talk about instead is that famous emotional sphere, and how it completely swept me up, in a pulse that I felt connected to that of every single spectator among the thousands who filled every corner of the Auditorium, leading me to one conclusion: at the 25 June concert, I witnessed the epiphany of a band that will be (and perhaps already is) legendary. A group that will leave its mark regardless, perhaps not in the old sense of the fascination with the doomed rocker, not by launching a new wave of youth subcultures that are now ever more scattered and hidden, but rather by becoming, in some way, the bearer of an imaginary. And that's something that goes beyond skill and having released great albums; it's something you fully understand only by reading it on the faces of the people around you, in exactly the same way you're feeling it yourself. Just as we felt it in 2001 or in 2005.

My no-longer-so-young age in 2024 also lets me interpret this emotion with a detachment that isn't granted to those who sink their teeth into life at twenty (with all due respect to Nizan).

Even the atmosphere before the concert takes on the air of a religious vigil: there's a palpable sense of community, as if everyone there were part of a single united entity. Being there means belonging to something, and having that something belong to you in turn. Familiar faces cross paths among the crowd (including Fast Animals Slow Kids in full attendance), you can tell how many of us travelled hundreds of kilometres to get there, and you can sense both calm and impatience in the conversations drifting past you.

It really is a liturgy, the one that takes place from the moment the lights go down, with the messianic entrance of the Irishmen; Grian himself paces the entire performance with the rhythm of a priest in a paradoxical state of frenzied ecstasy. The crowd in the front rows lets loose in the pit and in crowdsurfing during the more driving tracks; I'm tempted to throw myself in among them, but then I remember my lungs and legs aren't what they used to be, so I stay in the good spot I'd already carved out, still on the floor but slightly raised, from where the view is perfect. I feel a bit old, I must admit, but I take joy in watching the younger ones wring themselves out in a cathartic dance, rather than pointing their phone cameras as, unfortunately, too often happens nowadays even in rock/alternative circles. Generally speaking, though, there are far fewer lit-up screens than we've recently grown used to. Most of the audience limits itself to snapping a couple of photos or a short memory clip, before letting itself be lulled by the barrages that Fontaines Dc dish out in abundance. Some sway their heads, some sing at the top of their lungs, some stare wide-eyed. All of us, though, are captivated and spellbound. There's an emotion that unites us all. An emotion that unites, it must be said, a crowd surprisingly varied in age. The dominant bracket is certainly the twenty-to-thirty range, but you see plenty of very young people barely out of high school, lots of over-40s, even a few over-50s and beyond. And that's not a trivial thing; while it's fairly common to find a wide age range at concerts by old glories that successive generations periodically rediscover, it's rather rare to see forty- and fifty-somethings at the concert of a "new" band.

Later, Grian Chatten and co. take in the final ovation and the Cavea lights up again. You exchange a glance with the people next to you, a smile, almost as if to say "wow" telepathically. Someone's already talking about the concert next November at the Alcatraz in Milan (already sold-out, unsurprisingly). Reaching the exit shortly after, you can clearly feel a mood of general enthusiasm. The day-after comments scattered across social media back up that enthusiasm and the impression that pretty much all of us leave the Auditorium with: the memory of having experienced something big, something that goes beyond the simple notion of attending a great band's concert. All of this reinforces my belief that, even looking back in ten, fifteen or twenty years' time, we will look at Fontaines Dc as a symbol and inspiration of these times.

Am I overstating it? Maybe, who knows, after all only hindsight can confirm or disprove it. But on the fact that our heroes from Dublin will leave a tangible mark, I'd be ready to bet on it. Ready to bet that if there's anyone from our current era who will endure in future collective memory, it can only be them and, probably, Idles, whom I also hope to manage to see live soon (having already failed a couple of attempts with them too) to further confirm this belief of mine.

When the chance comes up, I'll ask my little girl for "permission" to be away for another evening when I won't be able to keep her company in her games or tell her a story. In exchange, I'll promise her that when she's older, and her turn comes to hop on rickety trains or buses to reach her idols' concerts, I won't nag her too much. I'll suggest she enjoy those moments through her own eyes, without relying too much on her phone, except to answer my late-night calls as an anxious father. If she shares my passions, I'm still sure the day will come when she'll ask me about Fontaines Dc; and that's when I'll pull out the vinyl copies of "Dogrel", "A Hero's Death", "Skinty Fia" (and very probably the forthcoming "Romance" and other future albums), and I'll be able to tell her a great story. One that, whatever critical or emotional judgement each of us might have of it, I'm sure will be worth telling.

(Photo: Pasqualini/MUSA)

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