Saturday at Reading 2024: Fontaines DC assert their excellence and Fred again.. makes history

It’s a very soggy field full of people who welcome The Last Dinner Party onto Reading’s Main Stage this afternoon, but it’s a field-full nevertheless. And, although the band might be more used to seeing corsetry and ruffs than raincoats at their shows, they more than make up for this sartorial sensibleness with a set that’s every bit as flamboyant as we’ve come to expect from the breakout, BRIT-winning five piece. From the medieval-style banners bearing the TLDP crest, to bassist Georgia Davies sporting a ‘Sinner’ tee of the band’s own design, to the moment ringleader Abigail Morris stokes a friendly rivalry between Reading and Leeds vis-a-vis chanting the outro of ‘Portrait Of A Dead Girl’: everything they do is intentional, yet playful; poised, yet not overly polished. 

There are some slight setlist curveballs - choosing to include the Albanian-language ‘Gjuha’ is respectable, given it’s not a crowd-pleasing banger per se, and their riotous cover of Sparks’ ‘This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us’ would likely hit harder if the majority teenage crowd were at all familiar with the original - but, as they launch into the name-making ‘Nothing Matters’ for a big-ticket finale, there’s no doubting that The Last Dinner Party were made for stages this size. 

When Pantone announced its peachy Colour of the Year for 2024, it had no idea that a lime green explosion was about to dominate the entire pop cultural landscape. First, of course, came ‘BRAT’, and now in a move of unwitting synchronicity, Fontaines DC’s ‘Romance’ roll-out has come bathed in the colour of neon slime (plus a hefty splash of hot pink). Despite the album only landing little over 24 hours before, you can already spot the acid font of a Fontaines T-shirt wherever you look; they may be playing fourth fiddle beneath RAYE, Lana and Fred on the Main Stage but listen to the whispers of the crowd and it feels like there’s one name on everyone’s lips.

Grian Chatten, who’s saved his own lime bomber jacket for this special occasion, has clearly got the memo. Strolling on to the insidious, slow-building storm of ‘Romance’’s title track (and probably the best album opener in recent memory), there’s a sense of total confidence to everything about the next 45 minutes. It’s in the way guitarist Carlos O’Connell casually sits down at a synth, fag hanging out his mouth, to deploy the opener’s gnarly hellmouth of a climax; in how they play over half of the new record, confident - and correct - in the knowledge that all of these tracks have already permeated through to the public consciousness. They carefully pick the back catalogue moments that are arranged around it - early favourite ‘Boys In The Better Land’ sounds positively wide-eyed in its youthful vigour, while Chatten’s snarling, lyrically-dense bridge on ‘I Love You’ is a visceral sneer of brilliance. But watching Fontaines deliver the wares of their newest, from the pinballing vocals of ‘Here’s The Thing’ to the simple sweetness of ‘Favourite’ to, of course, a gasping, gripping ‘Starburster’ today is like watching Arctic Monkeys first serve up ‘AM’ or watching any truly generational band stepping so obviously into their imperial phase. ‘Romance’ is alive and it sounds like it could take on the world.

In an age where success often seems a product of social media savvy first, and decent songs second, the continued ascent of Wunderhorse over the past few years has been a heartening one. Perhaps out of everyone on this year’s line up, Jacob Slater and co seem like the band that could best have been plucked from Reading and Leeds 30-odd years ago, by which we mean that - on the nihilistic howl of recent single ‘July’ in particular - they sound like a lost band from the glory days of grunge’s apex. But more than just a common strand of throaty wildness and an ability to leave it all on the stage, Wunderhorse’s whole attitude harks from a simpler time, when the music did the talking because the musicians were too busy smoking and trying to avoid the press.

Cuts from debut album ‘Cub’ feel like crossover hits now, from the twanging strut of ‘Leader of the Pack’ to the still-devastating narrative of ‘Teal’; ahead of new album ‘Midas’, meanwhile, its wild-eyed title track has clearly already joined the fan favourite ranks, as people clamber on each others’ shoulders and pack out the Radio 1 tent. One person has even brought a purple flare that gets let off at the climax of ‘Purple’, which would probably have been a great image to put on their Instagram but you know… nevermind. 

Stepping onstage decked out in a gold sequinned dress, backed by a sizable choir of Black singers and what seems like half an orchestra, RAYE’s setup is more than a little different to that of Reading’s traditional indie-rock fare. And yet the Main Stage crowd is already captivated - evidence that the festival’s increasingly catch-all genre palette is, fundamentally, simply a response to the music tastes of its youthful demographic. Indeed, RAYE too seems attuned to - if not preoccupied by - what this particular audience would want from her; much of her stage time is given over to older, somewhat soulless dance-pop numbers from further back in her catalogue which, although vastly improved by the big-band treatment, still pale in comparison to any from last year’s remarkable, record-breaking ‘My 21st Century Blues’. 

That being said, when her more recent material is given an airing, it’s nothing short of flawless. Epic latest release ‘Genesis’ rightly gets its flowers, and ‘Black Mascara’ is lent extra weight by her wholesome admission that she too came to Reading when she was 16, hoping that “one day people would give a shit about [her] music”. In this context, set staple ‘Ice Cream Man’ is rendered even more moving (something we barely thought possible), its account of sexual assault taking on greater significance when received so emotionally by ears so young. Forget the hits she’s lent her vocals to; it’s these moments that make RAYE such a vital voice. 

Having changed the configuration of their former dual main stages this year to instead comprise one headline stage and a new outdoor dance stage - entitled The Chevron - it is with no small volume (pun firmly intended) that we implore Reading and Leeds to revert back for 2025. Entering to a stage decked out like a majestic walled garden, that blazes under red lights for ‘Summertime Sadness’ and turns black and white and grainy for ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’, the presence of a global icon like Lana Del Rey at Reading should turn the dusky set into one of the weekend’s most spectacular moments. Instead, most of the crowd can barely hear her as the thumping sounds of Sonny Fodera on The Chevron drown her out almost entirely. Even from the stage, Del Rey can tell: “Can you hear me through the techno?”

As it turns out, we get even less time to try as, following a stirring ‘Video Games’, she’s cut off prematurely and comes back on to sit and watch the fireworks. A following apology statement from the festival makes it clear that, unlike her previously cut Glastonbury performance, this time it was “due to an error by the production team”. Let us hope Del Rey bothers to come back to the UK’s festival circuit and complete what she started, but you couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

Of all the people wandering around Reading with the cover of Fontaines DC’s new album splashed across their chest, tonight’s headliner is surely the most unexpected. And yet, for Fred again.. to pay homage to ‘Romance’ during one of the biggest sets of his career is also strangely on-brand, since it’s his intertextual, sample-heavy style - and its immense mainstream popularity - that has landed him this history-making gig. The DJ, producer, musician, and songwriter is the first dance music artist ever to headline Reading and Leeds, and although much has been made online of these twinned festivals losing touch with their rock roots (etc., etc.), this is a set that could go toe to toe with any guitar band’s in terms of effort, energy and sheer enjoyment. 

Ahead of tonight, there were perhaps some question marks over how Fred - an artist surely most suited to darkened rooms, or at least the wraparound enclosure of a festival tent - could adapt to suit the open expanse of an outdoor Main Stage. His solution? To simply create a laser canopy of his own, at the centre of which - on a raised platform in the middle of the packed crowd - he conducts the drop of opener ‘Turn On The Lights again..’ as if some sort of audiovisual angel. Back and forth between this platform and the stage itself he goes (presumably by, well, just legging it), orchestrating a collective ebb and flow between pounding intensity (‘Jungle’; ‘Rumble’) and heartfelt call and response (‘peace u need’; ‘Angie (I’ve been lost)’). The fact that he’s thrilled to be here is writ large across his face - he’s another for whom Reading was a teenage rite of passage - and, actually, it’s difficult not to be thrilled for him. Rock and indie will always be in Reading and Leeds’ DNA, but this year Fred again.. makes an irrefutable case for widening the gen(r)e pool.

Tags: Fontaines D.C., Fred again.., Lana Del Rey, Raye, The Last Dinner Party, Wunderhorse, Reading & Leeds, Festivals, Reviews, Live Reviews