The members of DC Fountains are everywhere. Soon, they will even be on our screens, peripheral figures, but terribly charismatic, of the next film ofAndrea Arnold, Bird. With a release scheduled for January 1, 2025, the film revolves around the figure of Bug (in the guise of Barry Keoghan) and is punctuated by the brilliant “A Hero's Death” – one of the Irish group's most iconic tracks. His latest album, Romancereleased at the end of August, established the group as one of the most followed and acclaimed in current rock. We had to be clear about it, and go to the only Parisian in DC Fountainsgiven this Wednesday, November 13 at the Zénith in Paris. With the help of a wonderful play of lights to enhance the silence of Grian Chattenits discreet leader, the group proved that it had all the cards in hand to make rock cool again.
The punk renaissance of Irish poetry
“I run, I run, I run”. This is how the first verse written by Grian Chatten at the age of 9. Already, the feeling of urgency, and the burning passion for poetry, which we find today in the piece “Starbuster”, written after an anxiety attack at St. Pancras station in London. Three weeks later, he was diagnosed with ADHD. In an article from Guardianthe artist recalls the times he would run up the stairs up to twelve times before leaving his house, making sure he was not missing anything: “Each time, I lost a little more confidence in myself, I had the impression of being incapable of taking care of myself”. And if he has since become a world-famous rock star, opening forArctic Monkeys in North America in 2023 or starring in the highly watched TV show Jimmy Fallon, Grian Chatten remains today anxious at the idea of being in public. On the Zénith stage, it's impossible to pretend. A simple “Paris” serves as a greeting to the public, to whom he does not speak during an hour and a half of concert. No matter: it is not the affability of its singer that the audience of DC Fountains comes to seek, but rather, a boiling energy, like these first verses – “I run, I run, I run”.
Beginnings, like first times, are obsessions specific to Grian Chatten. Throughout the discography of DC Fountainsit is difficult to ignore the power of its opening sentences. On Dogrelthe group's first record released in 2019, he intones: “Dublin in the rain is mine / A pregnant city with a Catholic spirit”. What gave the color to a music which tries, year after year, to say something about Irish identity. The “DC” of the group holds to this – Dublin City. The city which saw its members meet on the benches of the university, find common affections (poetry and literature in their sights) to finally see the birth in 2014 of the genesis of what is becoming DC Fountains – the group that brings rock up to date. Nice journey for a band of boys whose first album made its title a tribute to doggerelworking-class Irish poetry, born 1630.
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