Live Report: Kingfishr deliver a stellar set in St Anne's Park

Kingfishr can hardly be called an emerging band anymore.

Their St Anne's Park gig follows two sell-outs in the 3Arena last December, and they can look forward to a sling of similarly packed-out affairs in The SSE Arena, Belfast, Virgin Media Park, Cork, and Malahide Castle over the next couple weeks.

Following the release of their number one album Halycon in 2025, their new single ‘The Sun Will Never Settle’ is perched at the peak of the Irish charts, toppling Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘The Cure’ - something frontman Eddie Keogh mentions on stage. The preamble seems unnecessary in truth, as the heaving crowd of over 20,000 holler the song in unison.

Kingfishr at St. Anne's Park on June 5th, 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

You get the point: the Limerick band are a fixture in Irish music at this stage. Their rise until now has been exponential. 5 years ago, Eddie Keogh, Eoghan 'McGoo' McGrath and Eoin 'Fitz' Fitzgibbon were studying Hardware Engineering in UL.

They played their first headline show in Dolan's, Limerick, in 2023, around the time they recorded ‘Shot In The Dark,' a song that tackles the anxiety of pursuing a music career. As they tee up the track, they leave the stage and descend upon the audience. The trio greet fans as they squeeze through the crowd, before climbing up on the barrier that separates the front-standing section from the rest of the grounds. They emerge above the sea heads and phones to a huge cheer that rifts through St Anne's.

“We said we'd be back in jobs in six months and that never happened," says Keogh. “We never even dreamed of things like this. The day we decided to quit our jobs we wrote this song about how it would never work for us.”

Keogh gets the plaudits (and his name on a plethora of homemade banners) for his powerful, commanding baritone. He looks to be holding back tears as he sings, gazing out to the crowd of thousands who join in.

McGoo’s banjo playing is mechanically fabulous. His trickling riffs during interludes are technically astounding, bringing the pop-rooted vocal melodies of  tunes such as 'Gloria' or 'Eyes Don't Lie' back home to Ireland.

Despite being fresh out of their breakout year, the band have already have an impressive discography to pull from. ‘Flowers-Fire‘ mellows the audience; the now-ubiquitous banjo riff that precedes the chorus briefly silencing the crowd before Keogh's powerful vocals deliver a rifling emotional peak to the gig.

Kingfishr at St. Anne's Park on June 5th, 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

As the band play their leading track, 'Killeagh,' the noise is deafening.

A rendition of this song at their Malahide gig last June was clocked at 127dB, the same noise level as a jet engine taking off. This one seems to be pretty close. It’s hard to believe that a song that was "thrown together" as a favour for a Junior hurling team before being released as a B-side by an emerging band has resonated with so many people and become such a cultural phenom. The song has garnered over 60 million streams on Spotify and spent 16 weeks at number one on the charts, the second longest spell in Irish history. Attendees in their thousands link arms, jive and sing along to the anthem, indifferent to the bucketing rain, which for me, eclipse any statistic in terms of a gauge in resonance.

With all that done, all that's left to play is ‘Diamonds and Roses’. The final phrase of the chorus is reminiscent of Billy Joel's ‘She's Always a Woman,' only with an extra sequence that builds tension, before resolving with a surge of driving percussion and a trilling, acoustic melody on the banjo. Even those leaving early, seemingly to beat the traffic, do so walking backwards to face the stage for the final song.

For a band who have only released their debut album last year, Kingfishr are already an established force in Irish music, evident of the 20,000 people that have trekked out to St Anne's to witness their performance this evening.  The band have capitalised on a wave of resurgence for Irish music that includes bands like Amble, Madra Salach and The Mary Wallopers. What separates Kingfishr, is the blend of traditional music that is deeply rooted in Irish history with the modern production and catchy, pop melodies that feel modern and fresh but create feelings of deep nostalgia