MUSIC: The LaFontaines are Live at the Grand Social

FRESH from a support tour with The Summer Set and the limited release of double A side ‘Class/Paperchase’ for Record Store Day, The LaFontaines have just announced a set of headline shows across the UK and Ireland to coincide with festival appearances. 

The band’s much-anticipated debut album, ‘Class’, was released in 2015 and charted in the UK album chart, as well as at number 10 in the Scottish album chart. Known for their high intensity live shows, The LaFontaines followed up the album release with a Main Stage appearance at T in the Park and rounded off 2015 with a sell-out performance at Glasgow Barrowlands.

The LaFontaines are the most exciting force in music in recent years and the quintet – Kerr Okan, John Gerard, Darren McCaughey, Jamie Keenan and Iain Findlay – are becoming steady live performers with a brace of gigs under their belts.

The lads grew up in the gritty reality of contemporary small town Scotland but they are about to shake up the music industry and the whole social structure of the UK with their quite astonishing debut album.

A diverse array of musical influences is mixed and melded together to produce a sound that is characteristically and unmistakably theirs. Rock, Hip-Hop, pop, drum and bass..pretty much everything but country, swirls around the Font’s music machine, emerging as an entirely new beast with a bad attitude, a strong Scottish accent and a healthy dose of rage.

Rapper and Font-in-chief, Kerr Okan, is understandably thrilled to unleash the first Font’s long player on an unsuspecting world. He said: “Our debut album Class is a culmination of everything we have managed to achieve, and everything we have worked on and worked for. A band like this, we are sort of first through the door, there’s never been anything to gauge it against, there’s never been anything like this before.”

It’s often been said that The LaFontaines shouldn’t work – no-one should be able to pull off the insane blend of styles that they do. Yet when you see them play, it’s seamless, it’s natural, and it’s mind-blowing.

See for yourself when they play the Grand Social on Tuesday, November 22.

Ticket’s €13.50 includes booking fee are on sale now from Ticketmaster.