All Together Now review: Fontaines, Wet Leg, Cliffords... six talking points from Friday night
Fontaines DC's last show in Ireland was at Dublin's 3Arena before Christmas and it feels like the entire 30,000 attendees at the sixth edition of All Together Now have turned out at the main stage to welcome them back to Ireland on Friday night. In the interim they've played to 45,000 at Finsbury Park in London. They're a no-frills rock band; as usual frontman Grian Chatten keeps the talking to a bare minimum: "We're Fontaines DC," he needlessly declares halfway through their 90-minute show. "Free Palestine" and "Fuck the far right", he adds during the show, the latter by way of introducing I Love You.
Chatten, clad all in black, conducts the crowd through the likes of Skinty Fia and Jackie Down the Line. A Hero's Death, with the hopeful refrain "Life ain't always empty", shows the simple but effective way in which Fontaines DC inspire devotion.
It's not all amazing, though, as the middle section of the set needs Big to shake it free of a plodding couple of songs, In The Modern Worldthen inducing another mass singalong before they finish with a riotous Starburster.
Earlier in the evening, Spanish rock band Hinds told the crowd that their first gig in Ireland, back in 2016, featured Fontaines on support duty. It's been a meteoric decade for them since - who knows where they go next. Wherever they want - they haven't put a foot wrong yet.
2. Busy crowd
All Together Now has been sold out for months and it feels busier than usual on Friday afternoon. It's the first year that they've opened the site up to all ticketholders for the Thursday, the handful of acts who performed on the night enjoyed good-sized crowds. On Friday, every second person seems to be sporting the Fontaines DC-emblazoned Bohemian FC jersey. Surely the best band merchandise in recent years.
Enjoying All Together Now on Friday were, front, Dylan Griffin, Yasmin Gardezi and Conor Fahy; back, Alan McCarthy and Zak Collins, from Cork and Kerry. Picture: Larry Cummins
3. Site tweaks
Organisers have made a few tweaks to the site this year. As usual the main thoroughfare has the giant wooden deer statue looking over it towards beautiful Curraghmore House. The Bandstand, scene of lots of fun over the years - including a storming set by the Knocknaheeney's finest the Kabin Crew last year - has had a glowup, becoming the Bandstand Arena, with towering pillars of lights and speakers all around. It looks and sounds great.
4. Cliffords as the next big thing
Another new addition, between the main stage and Something Kind of Wonderful, is the small new bands tent, called Flourish. It plays host to Cork five-piece Cliffords on Friday afternoon - another band to benefit from the busier than normal early turnout. Judging by the reaction, with almost all the songs shouted back at them, they seem primed to lead the next generation of bands in 'doing a Fontaines'.
Cork band Cliffords at All Together Now.
Iona Lynch already looks and sounds like the quintessential frontwoman, explaining how Cliffords hadn't even played a show outside of Ireland a year ago. She calls for a moshpit at one stage because "We haven't had one of those before; we're not Gurriers," she jokes of the Dublin post-punk noiseniks who play ATN on Saturday night. Lynch is happy to declare, halfway through the show, that it's already the best gig they've ever played. It feels like one everyone in the hot, heaving tent will remember for a long time past this weekend.
5. Wet Leg look the part
Another band who have enjoyed a meteoric ascent are Wet Leg, who exploded in popularity with the winking song of the summer 2021, Chaise Longue. Since then, there have been Grammys and Brit Awards and stadium support slots with the likes of Foo Fighters. For their second album Moisturizer, released last month, frontwoman Rhian Teasdale has completely transformed her look.
Maybe it's simply after finding the unexpected new love that informs the new record, but she has gone from a previously unassuming brunette from the Isle of Wight to writhing and crawling around on the ground, flexing her muscles and shaking her ass in silver hot pants.
She looks like the quintessential rock star now. She started the band with Hester Chambers who still writes and performs with Wet Leg but has taken a step back from the limelight due to a heady dose of social anxiety. It's interesting to watch her play guitar in their set ahead of Fontaines DC. She goes long stretches without looking at the crowd but still seems to be enjoying herself.
How could anyone not have fun at a Wet Leg show? Strokes-esque new songs like Davina McCall ("I'll be your davina, I'm coming to getcha," Teasdale sings of the Big Brother host) and Mangetout sound great, while they also play the album closer, U and Me at Home Again, for what they say is the first time. There are a few throwaway, by the numbers rock songs, like Oh No, that we could do without, but when you have Chaise Longue up your sleeve...
Campers relax in the bright sunshine at the campsite at All Together Now. Picture: Larry Cummins
6. Late-night tales
ATN has a burgeoning reputation for its dance and late-night focus. As the crowds stream away from the main stage as Fontaines finish up at midnight, they could find Nia Archives, sporting a Republic of Ireland crop jersey circa 2002 World Cup, playing banging jungle music at Lovely Days, erstwhile Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth playing indie sleaze at the Circle, and Saoirse dropping electro-pop and the techno at the aptly named Immerse stage.
As we make our way home for the night, Arcadia, also with a new location in the corner of one of the campsites, is still going strong, flames shooting up into the night sky.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Tom Dunne: CMAT, Fontaines, and Kneecap to the fore in a golden age for Irish music
I hate to throw phrases like 'A Golden Age of Irish Music' around but, as politicians like to say, it is what it is. Homework was cancelled when Thin Lizzy had a hit with Whiskey in the Jar. By that metric the current success of Irish bands should warrant about a month off school. To put it in perspective, imagine if Glastonbury was taking place next year (it isn't, it's a rest year). No eyelid would bat if CMAT did the Pyramid Stage on Friday and Fontaines DC did the same Saturday. Hozier could play too. In Irish music history that is unprecedented. And before you split hairs with me CMAT played to a bigger more appreciative audience this year at Glastonbury than the later headliners The 1975 did. And that's before she releases her new album Euro-Country. Behold our new masters: CMAT I was at All Together Now the day after CMAT played. She was all anyone was talking about. People said she's been a bit emotional on stage, overwhelmed by the audience response. However emotional she may have been she wasn't as teary as the people telling me this. They adored her. Part of CMAT's appeal is her charm and relatability. She is down-to-earth and hilarious. She tells people she slept for 13 hours' after Glastonbury, the 'best sleep since November.' She also informs us that she writes albums quickly because, 'This might go away tomorrow.' She is genius songwriter with a gift for the killer line. I Wanna Be a Cowboy Baby, Stay for Something, Take a Sexy Picture of Me and The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station are equal parts heartbreak, wry observation and tragicomedy. It is a CMAT universe of KFC chicken wings and heartbreak. She has been on the receiving end of trolling over her physical appearance since the BBC Big Weekend of 2024. No surprise there, the internet is a cesspit, but she is forgiving even of that explaining that those who speak badly of her may not be having a great time of it themselves. It is this that I think is the key to her relatability. She is more at the Jarvis Cocker end of the celebrity spectrum than the diva end, and thank God for that. If you can't look at someone on stage and imagine, just briefly 'that could be me' then what's the point? She is all of that and yet has the self-possession on stage of a superstar. The CMAT FOR PRESIDENT movement starts today. Carlos O'Connell, Tom Coll, Conor Deegan III and Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty) Fontaines DC 'The biggest Irish group since U2' is the phrase being bandied about. I think that's unfair to the Cranberries, but I can see where they are going. Quite simply since their debut album Dogrel in 2019 they have not put a foot wrong. They are incendiary live with a reputation that has proceeded them around the world. Key to that in Grian Chatten. He has a voice that at first seems incongruous, but which utterly defines their uniqueness. The minute you hear it on radio you think 'Fontaines DC'. Like CMAT, the flow of material is eye-watering. Despite an incredibly demanding touring schedule, they also produce new material as if also working to a 'this might go away tomorrow' mantra. Go on their website to see the sheer extent of their worldwide appeal – its Sweden today, Helsinki the 10th, Manchester the 15th and on and on. Kneecap onstage at Glastonbury. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP) Kneecap I had thought of Hozier for the third slot as his various successes – sell out USA arenas, UK and US number ones, 1.6 billion Spotify plays for Too Sweet, and 3.1 billion for Take me to Church – obviously warrant it, but I had to go for Kneecap. Their success is just too hilarious to ignore. I don't think the British establishment has been this convulsed, this driven to new extremes of self-righteous indignation since the Sex Pistols released God Save The Queen. It's heart-warming to see. A group rapping in Irish. A man in a balaclava. An audience singing 'Get your Brits out.' How have I lived to see such wonders? Am I dreaming? There are more I could add here, Inhaler for a start, but let's leave it there and prepare our minds for the Boucher Road Playing Fields, Belfast, August 29. Fontaines DC and Kneecap in a town where on July 12 I saw both Union Jacks and Israeli flags flying side by side. It's going to be interesting.
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
'We just got lucky': Tales from the Cork lads who ran merchandise stalls for Oasis in the 1990s
Morty McCarthy remembers the first time he met one of the Gallagher brothers. It was February 1992, and the Cork man and his band, the Sultans of Ping, were sharing a bill with fellow Leesiders the Frank and Walters at the Boardwalk venue in Manchester. A local lad by the name of Noel popped up during the soundcheck to say hello. He'd been rehearsing in one of the other rooms with an unsigned group he said were called 'Oasis', and wanted to reacquaint with the Franks, a band he'd previously worked with as a roadie. Little did anyone there know that the 'sound' 21-year-old and the four lads banging out tunes in the basement were on their way to becoming the biggest band in Britain. Or that McCarthy would have a front seat on the Oasis rollercoaster. As the Sultans' career plateaued, the Greenmount drummer ended up working with the Manchester band's merchandise material in the era when they exploded onto the scene. His switch of career to the merchandise world originated in his Sultans days when, as the non-drinker in the band, McCarthy was the designated van driver. During a period of downtime in early 1994, he heard that their merchandise company Underworld needed somebody to ferry gear to various gigs. McCarthy signed up, and drafted in his childhood pal Damien Mullally when an opening came up for somebody to look after the company's London warehouse. 'Underworld were probably the biggest merchandise outfit in the UK at the time,' recalls McCarthy. 'We just got lucky, because we all started working literally a couple of months before the whole Britpop thing broke. And Underworld not only had Oasis, they also had Pulp.' Liam and Noel Gallagher messing about at Knebworth in 1996. Mullally and McCarthy enjoyed working in the merchandise, travelling to gigs and making the most of life in London. In true Cork style, they'd even managed to secure jobs in Underworld for a few more of their mates from home. Not that it was all plain sailing. There was still an element of anti-Irish feeling in the UK in the mid-1990s – especially in the wake of the IRA bombing of the Bishopsgate financial district in 1993 – and going around in a van full of boxes meant the Cork duo were regularly stopped and questioned at police checkpoints. 'We also got a bit of it around Abbey Wood where we lived, but things were much better when we moved to Hackney, which was more multicultural,' says Mullally. Meanwhile, between April 1994 and the release of Definitely Maybe at the end of August, a real buzz was building around Oasis. The three singles Supersonic, Shakermaker, and Live Forever, had been hitting incrementally higher chart positions, and the album went straight to number one in the UK charts. The Gallagher brothers had arrived. For the Cork duo, the gigs they worked were getting ever busier, and the few dozen t-shirts and other bits they'd previously sold were now getting to hundreds and even thousands of units. Underworld realised they were going to need a bigger boat. Or at least a decent lorry. This created a bit of a conundrum as nobody in the company had the special licence required in the UK. Step forward the lad with the Irish licence which, at the time, was universal and didn't need the special HGV training. 'I'd never even sat in the truck before,' recalls McCarthy, now 55, of the day they went to hire their new vehicle from a yard near King's Cross. 'I just thought, how hard can it be? We got in and the first thing I did was hit a barrier. I was just thinking 'I'm not going to be able to reverse this. So whatever we do, we'll just have to drive it forward'. I suppose we had this 'It'll be grand' attitude. I wouldn't do it at this age!' Morty McCarthy on a merchandise stall back in the 1990s. Life on the road was a mixture of good fun and hard work. Depending on the tour, Mullally and McCarthy would sometimes be living on the crew's bus, or other times driving to venues themselves. Of course there were some late nights and partying along the way, but the Oasis entourage also had a serious work ethic. 'If everybody knew that did a couple of days off, then there might be a big party and a bit of a blowout. But a lot of the time, people were up early to get set up at the next venue, and working long hours through the day. You wouldn't have been able to do your job if you were partying all the time,' says Mullally, now working at the Everyman theatre in Cork. 'People got on very well on tour. You knew you just couldn't be invading people's private space or doing the langer in any way.' The band themselves travelled in a different bus, but both Mullally and McCarthy recall the Gallagher brothers as being down-to-earth lads who were always pleasant to deal with. 'I think because we were Irish, that helped too,' says Mullally. 'Yes,' agrees McCarthy. 'I even remember Noel joking with us about Taytos and Tanora!' He does recall a friendly disagreement before a gig in Bournemouth when Liam Gallagher fancied his footwear. 'We had this Dutch driver who used to come every week delivering merchandise, and he used to sell Adidas off the back of the truck. I'd bought this pair of orange Adidas. Liam collected Adidas trainers. He was like 'I'm having your trainers.' And I was going no, and he was like '100 quid!'.' While it was predominantly merchandise that kept Mullally and McCarthy involved with Oasis, they also dropped a load of equipment for the band to Rockfield Studios in 1995. Those sessions at the Welsh studio would of course spawn (What's the Story) Morning Glory?,the second album that would propel the band to stratospheric levels of popularity. On the road, part of the Cork duo's job was dealing with the increasing amount of bootleggers who were selling unofficial merchandise near the venues. 'We'd go out to chat to them, and then of course it'd turn out that a lot of them were friends of the Gallaghers from Manchester,' says Mullally. 'They were mostly nice guys so you'd just ask them to push back a bit – 'Just go down to the end of the road to sell your stuff'.' The mid-1990s was an era when everything was paid for in cash. This meant the two Cork lads would sometimes end up with tens of thousands worth of banknotes in cardboard boxes or plastic bags in the back of the truck or in a hotel after a gig. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis arriving at Cork Airport in 1996. Picture: Dan Linehan An event like Knebworth in 1996 – when Oasis played to 250,000 people across two days – created even more issues. 'A few times a day we used to do a cash-run to get the money off the stall. Somebody would come along with a backpack and we'd stuff it with maybe 10 grand in notes," says Mullally. "You'd try to be as inconspicuous as you could walking through the crowd with that on your back, hoping that nobody comes at you.' Knebworth had 'proper' security vans taking the cash from the event HQ, but Mullally recalls the earlier days when himself and his co-worker would have to bank the money. 'You can imagine with all the stuff that was going on at the time, and two Irish guys coming into the bank with 20 grand in cash, sometimes even in deutsche marks if we were after a European tour. They'd be looking at you strangely, and you know that they're just about to push a button. But they might make a few phonecalls or whatever and we'd eventually get it done.' Knebworth is widely regarded as the high point for the band, but McCarthy also has particularly warm memories of the gig they played in his hometown just a few days later. 'I couldn't believe they were actually playing in Cork at that stage,' he says. He drove the truck from the UK via the Holyhead ferry, but as he arrived at Páirc Uí Chaoimh ahead of schedule, they wouldn't let him into the arena. Wary of leaving a truck full of merchandise parked around the city, McCarthy drove it to the seaside village of Crosshaven. 'When I got there I decided I'd leave it at the carpark at Graball Bay. I didn't even know if it'd fit up the hill but I just about managed it,' he recalls. When he went back later that evening to check everything was ok, there was a big crowd of children gathered around the emblazoned truck. 'There was a big mystery in Cork about where the Gallaghers were staying, and the word had gone around that this was their truck. One of the kids asked me 'Are Liam and Noel coming out to play?' I had to shoo them away.' Oasis merchandise has become an even bigger business since the 1990s. Picture: Lucy North/PA Those two Cork gigs were among the final dealings McCarthy had with Oasis. He has since moved to Sweden, where he teaches English, but regularly returns to the merchandising world for tours with various other bands. He's happy the Gallagher brothers are back together, and realises he was part of something special in the 1990s. 'It's hard to explain people the energy in the UK that the Britpop thing had. Musically, I didn't think it was the greatest, but the energy was phenomenal,' says McCarthy. ' I think at the time, the Indie scene was very middle class. But then along came Oasis. We probably didn't realise we were living in a golden era, but we had the time of our lives.'
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
'It's such a Cork story, the homecoming feels special': 'Christy' makes its home debut
'This feels like the big one,' says Cork director Brendan Canty at his film Christy's premiere. It's not the Berlin International Film Festival — it premiered there in February. No, this is Mahon Point shopping centre on a Wednesday evening, and the atmosphere is electric. As the Kabin Crew entertain the gathering crowds nearby, Canty is recalling a conversation with his wife the night before where he shared his nerves. 'She was like, 'what, Mahon Point?' But, like, it's such a Cork story and for all the cast especially, this is the one, like. Cork is their world. It's such a Cork story, the homecoming feels special.' Despite his nerves at home, Christy is a resounding success internationally. In Berlin, Canty won a top award for his street-cast, Cork-shot debut feature film and he describes it as a whirlwind experience. 'It was chaos, but it was amazing. You go from making this film for eight years, almost privately, to it being shown in front of 1,000 people in the opening. It was just crazy and it went down so well.' Christy follows two estranged brothers as they grapple with their past and resolve to unite over one summer in Cork City's northside. At the centre of the film is actor Danny Power, who said it was 'scary' bringing the film home to Cork but that he enjoyed working in his native northside. Brendan Canty, actor Danny Power, and Danny's five-year-old son Keano on the red carpet at Mahon Point Shopping Centre. Picture: Chani Anderson 'I live up the northside anyway and I used to hang around Knocknaheeny, and I was in the Cabin when I was younger. It's really a tight-knit community, like everyone knows everything about everyone. It's really community-orientated, you wouldn't find it in many places, that tight.' Canty, who grew up in Ballincollig, notes Power was the first person he cast through the Kabin Crew and he describes the rap collective as their gateway to the community. 'It allowed me, who's not from the area, access to the area, just going up there and having a purpose and hanging out and stuff like that. I got to meet the wider community and hear the stories,' he says. Christy tackles dark topics and Power says he put a lot of his own experiences into the character. 'It was weird because I felt a lot of the emotions that Christy was feeling in the film that I felt before myself in life,' Power says. 'Not everything, obviously, but I was able to portray him a lot easier than I thought I would.' The pair say it was a tight-knit crew on set and they formed strong friendships, and soon co-star Chris Walley is walking over to poke fun at Power. Jamie and Tiny from the Kabin Studio performing on the red carpet at the premiere of 'Christy' at Mahon Point. Picture: Chani Anderson Walley, best known as Jock in The Young Offenders, says he is proud of the work being done in Cork. 'It fills me with enormous pride to see the film and the TV projects that are coming from here and to be a part of that means an awful lot to me,' he says. 'This is where I grew up, where my love for acting began. So to be able to come back to actually work here on screen is an enormous privilege.' The balance of light and dark subjects in Christy is impressive, says Walley. 'I think the way Brendan's managed to balance both the drama and the reality of situations like this with the humour is again, very true and reflective of Cork. I'm very proud to be part of the film.' Christy is in Irish cinemas from August 29.
