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Nevertheless, there is something of Ian Curtis’s dagger-eyed intensity and introvert’s charisma in Chatten’s performance, though he’s not one for dancing. Just as I’m thinking that guitarist Conor Curley’s introduction to I Was Not Born vaguely resembles Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, the band themselves write, “literally sounds nothing like joy division lol”. It’s too much “continuous engagement with their fans” for my liking, but the band members’ responses are an occasional boon. It unfolds now beside a scrolling cacophony of comments from fans, pelting the band, in a live Q&A after the broadcast, with questions or, in a bold attempt to bend the laws of space and time, making requests. The hour-long performance was filmed in Dublin two weeks ago by directors Greg Purcell and Mark Logan in a room decorated with flowers, table lamps and drapes and enlivened with faintly psychedelic visual effects that might remind some viewers of BBC Two’s Snub TV. Instead, there is this livestream, which is live only in the sense that 3,000 fans are watching it at the same time. There is something of Ian Curtis’s dagger-eyed intensity and introvert’s charisma in Chatten’s performanceįontaines DC should have been commanding festival stages this summer. One that can outdo its debut within 18 months is something close to a miracle. A genuinely great, genuinely popular new rock band is as rare as a Sumatran rhino these days.

Still, you can’t blame people for wanting a lot from Fontaines DC. Vignettes of on-the-road angst are mercifully absent, but you can hear frontman Grian Chatten’s racing brain grappling with the onrush of attention and expectations: “Operating faster!” he yelps on You Said.

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Inspiring even more critical hosannas than Dogrel, A Hero’s Death, released last month, is bolder and darker, full of difficult questions. In between US tour dates in 2019 they somehow managed to record an exemplary second album in Los Angeles with producer Dan Carey.

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