On Fontaines D.C.’s panic-attack-inspired 2024 single “Starburster,” frontman Grian Chatten searches desperately for unfiltered certainty. “I wanna take the reality and not using a lens on it/My god-given madness is dependent upon it,” he sings, buried amid crunchy boom-bap beats and wheezing Mellotron. The music’s cryptic video—and its ominous parade of gimp masks, albuterol hits, and reconstructive surgical procedure—solely underscores the sense that the Irish group, as soon as well-known for its studied cool, could be going off the rails.
The place Fontaines D.C.’s 2022 album Skinty Fia bid a tenebrous farewell to the band’s Dublin origins, on Romance they embrace their transformation into globe-trotting rock stars. Having advanced from the pints, poetry, and working-class grit of their roots, they’ve traded longtime collaborator Dan Carey (Squid, Black Midi) for producer James Ford, recognized for his work with arena-scale bands like Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, and Depeche Mode; they’ve changed the uncooked post-punk of Dogrel and A Hero’s Demise with a Frankenstein assemblage of Britpop, gothic Americana, and ’90s alt rock. (They’ve up to date their outfits, too, with new seems that counsel Concord Korine styling the Spice Ladies.) Are they having an identification disaster, or enjoying with their newfound fame? Excitingly, it’s a little bit of each. Romance maintains the darkness integral to Fontaines D.C.’s music whereas showcasing a frisky unpredictability.
Romance opens with a sense of limitless chance framed towards a backdrop of impending doom. The ominous title monitor seems like a demise march: Its piano melody teeters between innocence and occult, accompanied by brooding fuzz guitar and percussion that sounds prefer it was recorded in a humid cave. “Possibly romance is a spot,” Chatten sings seductively: “For me/And also you.” What follows is equally sprawling and surrealistic, combining the Remedy’s haunting sweetness with the Pixies’ nightmarish edge. Opulent string preparations conjure the ghosts of basic cinema, then give solution to a darkly Western affect.
Chatten sounds extra vibrant than ever, exuding the starry-eyed curiosity of a traveler exploring a brand new metropolis. From his jittery respiratory and soulful crooning on “Starburster” to the pressing falsetto and seductive sighs of “Right here’s the Factor” to a weepy head voice on “Want,” his newfound vary is exceptional, and so is the band’s. On “Within the Trendy World,” they channel the dreamy tones of Lana Del Rey’s “Unhappy Lady” and the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” On “Demise Kink,” Chatten’s voice shifts between narcotized and menacing as he unspools lyrics like a spherical of beautiful corpse: “I dwell meretricious/You shattered/Wonderful stars from the drink.”
