Fontaines D.C.

I’ve been following the band for a while and think they’re great, but this was the first time I saw them in a larger venue. Brings the expected setbacks, where you don’t really see much of the stage,, and so on, but that can’t be helped. I was a little taken aback by all the political activism that transpired in particular at the end of the show. Is there really anybody out there who believes that shouting “free Palestine” at a postpunk concert in West Berlin does anything at all, either for the population in Gaza or for ending the conflict more broadly? Let’s face it, it just makes the teens and twens at the event feel special and like they “belong”. I guess that’s worth something too.