Devotion runs through Fontaines DC's music. The Dublin group first burst onto the post-punk scene with their 2019 debut, Dogrel, a delicate, gripping homage to their hometown; 2022's throaty Skinty Fia unpacked the guilt they felt after moving to London. Now they're examining devotion through an entirely new lens on the opening title track of their fourth album, Romance. Over brooding, cinematic synthesizers, singer Grian Chatten declares, “Maybe romance is a place, for me and for you.”
If the band's four pre-Romance singles teach anything, it's that Fontaines shouldn't be pigeonholed into any particular category. From the '90s grunge-infused rap-rock of “Starburster” (one of the year's best tracks) to the jungle-infused dream-pop charm of “Favourite,” the band quickly dissolves any genre boundaries they may have imposed upon themselves. The shifts have been exciting, unpredictable, and even a little nerve-wracking. But Romance lives up to the promise: the record is enormously expansive, and Fontaines' stubborn integrity is still there, and perhaps more determined than ever.
The disruption doesn't end with the music. A big buzz around the album's release has been the band's sudden change in aesthetic and style. The colors are brighter, the costume choices more eccentric. Though it may seem drastic, this isn't a band struggling to reinvent the wheel; it's a group stepping into a new, confident phase. And as it turns out, this isn't a coincidence at all. There were harbingers that this version of Fontaine had been in their DNA all along. In a Reddit AMA the band held five years ago in support of Dogrel, frontman Chatten expressed his love for Arthur Rimbaud's poem “Romance,” saying, “For me, it feels similar to Bob Dylan's early lyrics.”
It takes a true romantic to create a world, and Fontaines DC have mastered the craft. Each song on Romance serves as its own fantastical cinematic universe, fleshed out with fictional characters, profound monologues, and perfectly curated sonic elements to match. This is in part due to the band's decision to work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) on this record. The instrumental textures on Romance sound crisper and more distinctively precise, highlighting the most harmonious synchronization between drummer Tom Coll, bassist Conor (Deego) Deegan III, and guitarists Carlos O'Connell and Conor Curley.
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Tracks like “Desire” and the Slowdive-esque “Sundowner,” which features Carly on lead vocals, dip full-on into shoegaze territory, with sorrowful guitar riffs built over a steady stream of lush strings. “Death Kink” is a masterclass in edge and restraint, as waves of sky-high, fuzzy guitar pause long enough for Chatten to take a breath and utter, “I made a promise/Shit, shit, shit.”
The band's vocal performances function as storytelling tactics in and of themselves. Whether he employs a rasping growl, floats into a falsetto, or steps back from the mic to let his words reverberate and fall into negative space, Chatten surpasses himself here. Romance's great strength is the backing vocals sung by Deego and O'Connell, who act as parentheses and secondary narration, telling little stories. Take the push-pull dialogue that unfolds on the Lana Del Rey-esque “In The Modern World,” an orchestral examination of numbness and escapism: “I don't feel nothing, I don't feel bad.”
At certain points on the album, especially the string-heavy cuts, Fontaines DC feel like they're on the brink of disillusionment. They're well aware of the crumbling dystopian world around them, and there's a sense of apocalyptic existentialism and a very Hail Mary “love at the end of the world” sensibility that runs throughout the album. And yet they maintain that romance – no matter how idealistic and fickle the concept – is at its core, a delusion worth indulging in.
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The album's heart is “Horseness Is The Whatness,” which takes its title from James Joyce's Ulysses. Singing lyrics written by O'Connell, Chatten giddily begs someone to figure out what words make the world go round. “Because I thought it was love,” he pleads, with a childlike defiance that makes you realize he wants to believe it. “But some say it's got to be a choice.”
The tension between love and choice recalls a song on the band's 2020 album, A Hero's Death. The title is the message, and it's repeated throughout the track: “Love Is The Main Thing.” On Romance, Fontaines DC drives through a thick smog of angst and doom, asking a ton of questions about what it all means. They seem to have known the answers all along.
