Fontaines are the future festival headliners we’ve all been searching for as they perform to 26,000 adoring fans in Manchester
11:45, 16 Aug 2025Updated 11:49, 16 Aug 2025
Jenna is the What’s On Editor for the Manchester Evening News, covering everything from new restaurant and bar openings to gig reviews and live coverage of major events and festivals across the region. Jenna joined the M.E.N In 2022 having previously worked as a freelance food and travel writer and as editor of Supper magazine.
Fontaines D.C. at Wythenshawe Park, August 2025(Image: MEN)
Walking down the tree-lined avenues of Wythenshawe Park on a balmy Friday evening, you would be forgiven for thinking that we had gone back in time.
The bright attire worn by some heading into the 26,000 capacity venue is reminiscent of Charli xcx’s Parklife headline show in June, while a sea of football shirts – some, the unmistakable cream and black jacquard jersey of the recent Oasis x adidas collection – jolts us back to those biblical homecoming shows at Heaton Park.
There’s no time for nostalgia tonight here though. Step into the bowl, and it becomes clear that the shade is in fact an Irish Green and for as many Oasis shirts there’s an equal amount of Fontaines D.C. merchandise doing the rounds.
Last year, the Irish outfit teamed up with Dublin’s Bohemian’s FC to launch a football shirt for Medical Aid for Palestinians, with 30 per cent of the profits going to their emergency relief efforts in Gaza.
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Their logo is emblazoned on the front of the Irish club’s 2025 third alternative jersey, while a line from their track ‘Horseness Is The Whatness’ – “I thought it was love” – is printed on the reverse, and it features the colour scheme of their latest record ‘Romance’ across the body and sleeve trims.
Fontaines D.C. at Wythenshawe Park, August 2025(Image: MEN)
An embroidered hem tag features a Palestinian flag with the words “Saoirse don Phalaistín” – Irish language for ‘Free Palestine’.
Bringing this messaging to the fore, these shirts are out in force at Wythenshawe Park as the Irish five-piece play their biggest show in the city to date, following a rousing gig at Finsbury Park last month.
From Manchester’s Finest to Dublin’s Finest, if July was about celebrating rock ‘n’ roll comebacks and Britpop in all their glory, August is about bringing into sharp focus the world around us today – it’s beauty and it’s horror.
Fontaines and their main support act Kneecap are not ones to shy away from using their platforms to speak out about the current geo-political situation, namely the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The band have previously cancelled shows in solidarity with Palestine, so it was almost a dead cert that the Friday night opener of Live at Wythenshawe Park would been infused with such themes.
Fontaines D.C. at Wythenshawe Park, August 2025(Image: MEN)
But while support act Kneecap used their set to lead a huge crowd in chants of ‘free Palestine’ and repeat claims that Israel was guilty of ‘genocide’, the headliners own performance was less overt in this sense, though the screens behind them hammered home the message during the encore.
Their music after all is inextricably linked to the political, cultural and societal issues of today and the not-so-distant past, but also what it means to be alive today, with tracks imbued with intense soul-searching and foreboding.
But as their show at Wythenshawe Park showed, they have future Glastonbury headliner written all over them, meaning they’ll have plenty of time to hammer home whatever message or statement they so wish in the years to come.
As the light started to fade, and their mash-up of ‘In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)’ from David Lynch’s Eraserhead played over the speakers, interlaced with an eerie and ethereal ‘Starburster’, the crowd was invited to step inside the world of Fontaines, their very own cosmos.
What is intriguing about this band is their innate ability to keep evolving, making them one of the most thrilling and complex rock bands to watch and unpack.
Fontaines D.C. at Wythenshawe Park, August 2025(Image: MEN)
From their post-punk debut Dogrel (2019), via the self-introspection of 2020’s A Hero’s Death and anxiety of losing touch with their roots on 2022’s Skinty Fia, to last year’s confronting, cyberpunk-laden ‘Romance’, they are able to move into spaces like no other guitar band right now – and they make no apologies for it.
Snarling and confronting, ‘Here’s The Thing’ and Skinty Fia’s ‘Jackie Down The Line’ wake up the crowd, while the classic punk of the 70s is recalled with a jumpy rendition of ‘Boys in the Better Land’.
Rowdy and arresting, Chatten delivers ‘Televised Mind’ like a sermon, the crowd on an other-worldly journey with the frontman who paces and prowls across the stage – he is at the height of his powers.
Destined to be played in open fields with the sun slowly fading behind the trees, ‘It’s Amazing to Be Young’ feels anthemic, nostalgic and heartbreaking all at the same time with Grian’s earnest vocals.
Soundscapes are created with the dreamy instrumentation of ‘Death Kink’ from the business end of their most recent album, and ‘Before You I Just Forget’ that instantly brings a lump to the throat with its strings finisher.
Fontaines D.C. at Wythenshawe Park, August 2025(Image: MEN)
There’s plenty of twists and turns though as they interweave the more subdued, psychedelic, and heavy elements of their latest album with their earlier hits, ‘Big’, ‘Hurricane Laughter’ and ‘Hero’s Welcome’ – all of which inject an energy into the crowd, prompting mosh pits and out-of-key singalongs.
If encore opener ‘Romance’ is wistful and painful, third track ‘I Love You’ lands right on the nose, the words ‘Free Palestine’ flashing up on the screens as Chatten’s haunted lyrics, ‘selling genocide and half-cut pride’, swirl around the bowl.
The crowd lift their phones in unison as the words ‘Israel is committing genocide, use your voice’ appear in big bold lettering behind the frontman, before a final breath is taken with the ‘Starburster’ and we all come back down to earth, contemplating the last hour and half.
Watching Fontaines feels like we’re on the edge of something. Perhaps it’s their soul-searching lyrics ridden with foreboding and contemplation that makes it all feel very urgent.
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The world of guitar music has come a long way since Oasis burst onto the scene and delivered that much-needed energy and freshness that the category needed.
Seeing Chatten, wearing a ‘Live Forever’ t-shirt, effortlessly guide the audience with confidence into this next era with their sometimes cacophonous, sometimes heartbreaking discography is thrilling, exciting and refreshing to see, and reminds us of where it all started.
These Irish post-punk princes are on a trajectory but as their show at Wythenshawe Park showed, they’ll do it at their own pace, in their own style and on their own terms.
Setlist:
Here’s the Thing
Jackie Down the Line
Boys in the Better Land
Televised Mind
Roman Holiday
It’s Amazing to Be Young
Big Shot
Death Kink
A Hero’s Death
Before You I Just Forget
Motorcycle Boy
Big
Hurricane Laughter
Nabokov
Desire
Bug
Favourite
Encore
Romance
In the Modern World
I Love you
Starburster