Watch Fontaines D.C. perform ‘Desire’ live for fist time at stellar Alexandra Palace show

Fontaines D.C. played two massive London headline shows over the weekend – using the first to give ‘Romance‘ album favourite ‘Desire’ its live debut. Check out footage, the setlist and more below.

• READ MORE: At home with Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten: “Our personality is bigger than the sound that we make”

The Irish five-piece are currently in the midst of a sell-out UK and Ireland tour capping off a huge year in support of their acclaimed fourth album ‘Romance’. On Friday (November 22), they played the first of two gig at the capital’s iconic Alexandra Palace.

Frontman Grian Chatten typically kept banter with the audience to a minimum, aside from thanking the capacity crowd for coming out and for a quick statement of “Free Palestine” in response to a flag being waved.

After an explosive first set that featured fan favourites including ‘Jackie Down The Line’, ‘Televised Mind’, ‘A Hero’s Death’ and ‘Boys In The Better Land’ alongside new album highlights ‘Death Kink’, ‘Bug’, ‘Sundowner’ and the sing-along highlight of ‘Favourite’, the band returned for an encore that kicked off with ‘Romance’ cut ‘In The Modern World’ before the live debut of ‘Desire’.

After an almighty response for ‘I Love You’, the band then experienced some technical difficulties and were forced to leave the stage before returning with the promise of an extra song in the form of ‘Too Real’ before the almighty climax closer of ‘Startburster’.

Speaking to NME earlier this year about the inspiration behind the sound of ‘Romance’, Chatten said: “We spoke about pigeons taking flight at dawn, the Shibuya scramble, the feeling of a million people passing by but not seeing each other in their own world, the race to work in the morning, things like that.

“I don’t mean this in a bad way at all, but parts of the west coast of America feel like death to me. It feels like there’s something incredibly morbid about it, but also fantastical and dreamlike. It feels like the pearly gates. That brings an overwhelming feeling of comfort and everything’s very soft lit, but it’s terrifying at the same time. That’s something that gave me inspiration too.”

He added: “The colours that I hear in the music are not colours that you’d find in nature. The songs sound neon and ridiculous. In order to communicate that idea thoroughly, I didn’t want to go out on stage dressed the same as I was for ‘Dogrel’ or whatever. I wanted to put the audience in the right mindset to render them sensitive to the message we were trying to convey.”

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Fontaines D.C.’s Alexandra Palace setlist on Friday November 22 was:

‘Romance
‘Jackie Down the Line
‘Televised Mind’
‘A Lucid Dream’
‘Roman Holiday’
‘Big Shot’
‘Death Kink’
‘Sundowner’
‘Big’
‘A Hero’s Death’
‘Here’s The Thing’
‘Bug’
‘Horseness Is The Whatness’
‘Nabokov’
‘Boys in the Better Land’
‘Favourite’
Encore:
‘In the Modern World’
‘Desire’
‘I Love You’
‘Too Real’
‘Starburster’

In a five-star review of ‘Romance‘, NME concluded: “Much of its power comes from the way the discomfiting mood is offset by the lusciousness of the melodies. ‘Ah, it makes sense when you understand / The misery made me another marked man,‘ Chatten sings towards the end of closer ‘Favourite’, a celebration of the past and all its learnings. These final, perfectly-chosen words will only take on a life of their own and reverberate onwards.”

Fontaines D.C.’s 2024 UK and Ireland tour continues, before a run of huge festival shows and outdoor headline dates in summer next year. Visit here for tickets and more information.

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