Kneecap are basic but thrilling

00:00 04:30

Michael Hann has narrated this article for you to listen to.

It was Irish week in London, with one group from the north and one from the south. Guinness was sold in unusual amounts; green football shirts were plentiful; and so, at both shows, was a genuine
sense of joyful triumph – these were the biggest London venues either group had headlined.

The Irishness was much more visible onstage at Kneecap, not least because, as a proudly Republican group, they can’t really not make a big deal of being from west Belfast. Their statements have prompted the inevitable fury from some quarters: Kemi Badenoch (as business secretary) refused them a £15,000 grant to help them tour, on the grounds that the British state should not be aiding those who despise it. That seemed to be a faintly pointless gesture, given that Northern Ireland Screen and the National Lottery had already spent nearly £1.6 million on helping get a sort-of biopic of them made.

Kneecap are part hip-hop group, part political statement, part druggy city kids and part comedy act

It’s also exactly the response they wanted – they sued, claiming Badenoch had breached the Good Friday Agreement. Kneecap are provocateurs, not terrorists. Their film spends just as much time mocking puritan Republicanism and the folly of encouraging the spread of the Irish language by teaching kids how to discuss turf-cutting in their native tongue as it does on anything notably nationalist. The trio play themselves in the movie, and one of the running jokes is that one of them has a hardline loyalist girlfriend who requires him to shout IRA slogans at the moment of orgasm.

They’re also in a very curious place, because they’re part hip-hop group, part political statement, part druggy city kids and part comedy act (the film is very funny). It’s telling that they were joined on stage by Kurupt FM, the group who made the BBC comedy People Just Do Nothing, about hapless, self-deluding rappers in Brentford. Both groups share the same love of the music, and the same instinctive desire to play for laughs.

It made for a strange evening. Genuinely unnerving things would be followed immediately by supremely silly things. There was a lot of pro-Palestine chanting, which is to be expected. It was less felicitous to see the band lead the fans in a chant of ‘Ooh-ahh Hezbollah’. (Fellas, Netanyahu being a maniac does not make Hezbollah the good guys. It’s no less facile than Oliver Anthony’s crowd singing ‘Joe Biden’s a paedo’ in Shepherd’s Bush earlier this year.) And for those of us old enough to have used bomb scares as an excuse for being late for work on a regular basis, the sight of Irish tricolour balaclavas flying off the merch stand at 30 quid a pop was unnerving.

That’s not to take Badenoch’s side. If you don’t understand why Catholic kids from west Belfast might not have a lot of time for the British state, you maybe shouldn’t be in politics. And nor was it an angry gig: it was a party, with no sense of threat.

The music itself is basic, but thrilling – the hip-hop equivalent of a garage punk band – but what was truly notable was that at a big hip-hop show, in London, I did not see a single black face in the crowd. Kneecap have excitement and verve and wit, but for all their love of the music, they still stand outside hip-hop. I wonder what their future might be; I bet it’s not as a purely musical exercise.

Fontaines D.C. are the breakthrough rock band of the past half decade (you can measure their progress by the increasing prevalence of their T-shirts at festivals), and though I had not been completely convinced by them live before, they were absolutely breathtaking at Ally Pally, even as the older members of the crowd – not just me, I promise – got increasingly irritated by being shoved out of the way by large groups of enthusiastically drunk young men trying to reach the front.

Their most recent album, Romance, supplied much of the set, and it leapt from the stage, the dynamics in place, the guitars moving from furious to dazed to delicate. Singer Grian Chatten has evolved a Liam Gallagher-esque presence – a bit more movement than old Parka lad, but the same I-can-outstare-you intensity – that somehow projects charisma without challenge. The set – which was paced perfectly – built and built to a ferocious climax of huge singalongs, people on shoulders in astonishingly large numbers.

Fontaines D.C. feel very much like they are having their moment: there’s a palpable air of certainty about them, a confidence in their capacity to be as powerful as a juggernaut, without surrendering their immediacy and intimacy.

Next summer their shows are going to be huge and outdoor. But they carried off Ally Pally with gusto; I don’t think the giant stages are going to worry them one little bit.