An album best heard LOUD
Review of Fontaines D.C.'s "Romance"
Fontaines D.C.—Romance
Released August 23, 2024
I have heard nothing but amazing things about this band, but it wasn’t until their fourth studio release that I finally started checking them out. Their first album released in 2019 called Dogrel, so called after doggerel, a style of low-brow poetry similar to the limerick and thought to go back to Chaucer, and was also the style of poets William McGonagall and Ogden Nash. That album was named Album of the Year by Rough Trade and BBC Radio 6 Music, and was nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Their second album, A Hero’s Death (2020) was nominated for a 2021 Grammy in the Best Rock Album category, and their third Skinty Fia (2022) gave the band their first number one album on the Irish and UK albums charts and won them their first Brit Award for International Group. Now with their fourth album, Romance, the band is moving away from their tried and true methods and embarking on new sounds, new themes, but still in keeping with the spirit of their previous releases.
In many ways, this album is both a departure and a “rebirth” in their discography. Where their first three albums were largely focused on “pints, poetry, and working-class grit,” for this album, they decided to step away from their Irish-centric themes because it would have been “difficult to paint this vision of a dystopian and futuristic industrial landscape… but for it to sound like Ireland.” This album is centered around the soundtrack of a city of which lead singer and lyricist Grian Chatten knew “the colour and the year and the atmosphere and the temperature.” Although not about any particular city in the real world, the album was “very much informed by places we’ve been to and certain atmospheres at certain times. Like Tokyo at seven or six in the morning.”
For drummer Tom Coll, they consider this their first-ever studio album as they moved away from their initial philosophy of “if we can’t play it live, let’s not do it,” instilled in them by producer Dan Carey. In another first, it’s their first album to not be produced by Carey, with whom they made their first three records, but by James Ford, who has produced or co-produced nearly all of the Arctic Monkeys records and produced for legacy acts Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and Kylie Minogue, as well as new kids on the block Declan McKenna, Foals, and The Last Dinner Party. Given Fontaines D.C.’s touring history with Arctic Monkeys, opening for them on their North American tour in 2023, and Chatten’s affinity for Blur, catching one of their gigs at Wembley Stadium, it makes sense that, when wanting to go in a new direction, they would seek out a producer who’s worked with artists they admire.
My favorite songs are “Starburster,” “In The Modern World,” and “Bug.”
“Starburster” was the song that first caught my attention from all the high praise it got when it was released as a single in April 2024. But when I listened to it, I didn’t get it the first time. I didn’t hear anything that made me go “wow” and I thought I was just missing out on what everyone else was hearing. It wasn’t until I was at a live show of fellow Irish band Inhaler and “Starburster” played over the loud house speakers in between the opening act and Inhaler hitting the stage. Hearing it loud, I finally got it and I could even see the potential for it to be a huge song live. I’ve seen videos of their live performances and it doesn’t have the same oomph or thrashing that I was envisioning, or that I think they could with this song in particular. They’re actually quite chill and calm in their live performances of the song, not at all what you would expect for a band that started out in the post-punk scene in Dublin. But in any case hearing it over the loudspeakers made me give the album a second listen and that’s when the rhythm and cadence of Chatten’s performance really scratched my brain. I particularly love the rhyme of “Challenger” and “Salinger” and “Salamander” in Chatten’s Dublin accent. I would have that second verse on loop if I could.
Despite wide acclaim for the band and this album in particular, some fans noted that, for them, Fontaines D.C. is a singles band, and initially I was inclined to agree, but as sometimes happens when I’m doing these, going back through the album again and again, some songs win me over more with each listen than the first time I heard them. This is certainly true with this album. My initial knee-jerk reaction would have been to say “Starburster,” and “Bug” were the only two tracks I enjoyed, which I came into the album listening experience already enjoying from hearing them online, and the rest I could’ve gone with or without. But then upon second listen “In the Modern World,” and “Death Kink” caught my ear. Then “Sundowner.” Not all of them have really lodged in my brain the way those initial tracks did, but I greatly enjoy the album more overall now than I did at first listen.
Although it wasn’t one of my favorites sonically, I was particularly moved by the explanation of “Horseness Is The Whatness,” about guitarist Carlos O’Connell’s feelings around the birth of his daughter in February 2023. The title comes from James Joyce’s Ulysses, which O’Connell was reading to his baby when he wrote the lyrics Chatten sings. Alongside the “lush strings” features the ultrasound heartbeat of O’Connell’s child. The lyrics, fitting into the album’s overarching theme of “apocalyptic existentialism” and “romance…a delusion worth surrendering to” as it “embraces the quest for meaning amid the whirlwind of new life.”
When Fontaines D.C. were releasing their first album, they were heralded as an “intoxicating meld of post-punk nerviness and Joycean poetry,” or the heroes to save indie rock which had been declared dead, but this album takes inspiration from a wide range of sources. Each member brought with them their own influences like Chatten taking inspiration from Dylan Thomas and the Beat writer Jack Kerouac on the album’s lyrics. The album’s sound and instrumentation was inspired by individual band members finding particular influence in listening to Portishead, Deftones, Alice in Chains, Korn, which particularly inspired the rapping element of “Starburster,” and a grunge and hip-hop vibe brought over from drummer Tom Coll’s playing with fellow Irish group Kneecap. On the whole the album has “‘90s Brit Pop sensibilities,” Critics found that individual songs inspired comparisons to Lana Del Rey (“In the Modern World”), Kasabian (“Starburster”), Nirvana (“Death Kink”), and New Order (“Favourite”). The album also has non-musical influences from films like Sunset Boulevard, and Rumble Fish, the S.E. Hinton novel and Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name. The track “Motorcycle Boy” imagines Chatten in the role of the Motorcycle Boy, played in the film by Mickey Rourke, giving advice to his younger brother Rusty James, played by Matt Dillon, before he leaves town for California. Chatten thought about his younger brother and, as another reviewer put it, the song serves as both “a warning, but also an expression of love.”
I’m always rooting for Irish acts, particularly ones that are as steeped in Irish history and culture as this band is. The band initially bonded over their love of poetry, particularly Irish poets Patrick Kavanagh, James Joyce, and W.B. Yeats. Before releasing music, the band released two poetry collections, one inspired by the Irish poets that first brought them together, and another inspired by the Beat poets. Their first albums tackle Irish themes like “lament[ing] Dublin’s cultural, architectural (and every other way) decline;…existential detachment from their homeland;…and reevaluat[ion of] the Irish diaspora through the prism of some ancient Hibernia.” In July 2020, they performed live from Kilmainham Gaol for television program Other Voices and that’s significant for Kilmainham’s symbology in Irish Republicanism. It’s where the leaders and followers of the 1916 Rising, fifteen in total, were held and later executed. U2 have also filmed in Kilmainham for their 1982 video “A Celebration.” Fontaines D.C. have also referenced Irish punk band The Pogues in their music video for 2018’s “Too Real”, which paid homaged to The Pogues’ video for “A Pair of Brown Eyes.” Although the band no longer resides in Ireland, with many of the band members relocating to London or other parts of Europe, they maintain their Irish identity.
Sitting beside the accolades of their previous albums, Romance has already been nominated for two Grammy Awards in the Best Rock Album category and Best Alternative Music Performance for “Starburster.” Should they win, I imagine this will be another huge win not just for the band themselves, but for Irish acts as a whole. For many, many years whenever Irish talent win awards or receive praise abroad, the press would be very quick to call them British and consider their achievements to be achievements of British talent. But with more and more Irish talent asserting their Irish identities on the international stage, like when Paul Mescal said it wasn’t on his list of priorities as an Irishman to meet King Charles III, I hope as we see the Irish continue to have international success, they are granted the dignity of having their own national identity recognized and aren’t just painted broadly as “British.”
With each album, Fontaines D.C. have reached newer heights, and with this album, they might finally breakthrough on an international level. And even without having heard the other albums, reviewer for the Guardian Alexis Petridis noted that this album is “more straightforwardly approachable…but it doesn’t sacrifice any of the band’s potency,” adding that “thrillingly, it still carries the same grimy, careworn, aggressive qualities as their previous work.” I agree that this album is easily approachable, an excellent introduction to the band for anyone who, like me, has yet to really give the group a thorough listen. However, unlike with other artists I’ve reviewed, I feel like I’m still missing something by not having heard the band’s previous albums, like I’m walking into the middle of a conversation. I’m really interested to listen to all the albums previous, not just because it’ll give more context to this work, but also because I have a vested interest in Irish music and Irish art and Irish perspectives, particularly about Dublin. As much as I love Ireland and I can read about its history and practice the language on Duolingo all I like, it’ll never be the same as having been born there and coming from a generations-long lineage of people who have lived there, so to hear about Dublin and how it’s changed even in the last few decades, is really personally intriguing to me.