Fontaines D.C. - Romance Review
On their fourth album, Fontaines D.C. explore a world of their own creation and come back with their most expansive record to date.
Since the "pregnant city" of the Dublin band’s debut, Fontaines D.C. has taken fans through dreams, space, America, Sally's boneyard and The Bowery. But while their sound has shifted and grown upon each release in a way that is reminiscent of peers and recent touring mates Arctic Monkeys, their muse has always been Ireland - whether they are singing about their home country, to her or about moving away. Their latest album, Romance, marks a turning point in the band’s career as they leave Ireland behind to explore an entirely new, futuristic world of their own making.
The world that Fontaines D.C. built is a world where they are free to experiment with new sounds and ideas. Here there are subtle synths, nimble string arrangements and rattling electronics to accompany the band-in-a-room rockers that they do so well. It is at once a fun and serious record where Fontaines are not only creators, but characters too. The thick black boots, leather skirts, pink corn-rolled hair and luminous layers they kit themselves out in these days display them as androgynous steampunk troubadours ready to stomp through their own world as if on their own private mission to explore what they are capable of.
It is a quest that they take up with the confidence of a band that is yet to take a wrong turn. Over Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell’s strutting acoustic guitars Chatten sings of “28 years coming to an end” on Bug, as if confirming his own and his band’s reinvention. Chatten is the band’s leader and his vocal performance has its own side quest. Gone is the bark and languid bite of Fontaines’ early records, replaced with a cleaner, more complex range. He seamlessly switches from falsetto to drawl, at one point he almost raps. On Death Kink he is angrier, more sneering as he takes pride in leading an authentic life “You said that I was bad / That was fine / When you said I could be good, I wouldn’t have it.”
But the relationships Chatten chronicles on Romance are not dominated by a thirsty individualism. Despite being the band’s chief lyricist, Curley and O’Connell both receive full writing credits on one song each. For Curley, it is the Just Mustard indebted Sundowner which he also sings. The song is an ode to friendship and the crunchy shoegaze rubs up against his hazy vocals like the steam of a warm room rushing to cover glass as he sings “I just wanna hear you call” while Chatten relays back to him “I can’t help it”. O’Connell recently told the Guardian that he is often unsure if the love songs the band’s singer writes are about his fiance or about Ireland. Album standout, Motorcycle Boy, is for his younger brother who connects with Chatten through a shared interest in poetry and literature. It is a song sung with affection but one that also comes with a warning “All the life I’ve shown ya / Will own ya in time”.
The band cannot always hide the anxiety that also lurks within new places. The album’s first single, Starburster, packs the best of Fontaines D.C. into one song - the swagger of the boisterous Skinty Fia, the directness of Dogrel and the lofty warmness of their cover of Nick Drake’s Cello Song. But its bluster belies a bruising anxiety. Chatten wrote its lyrics after suffering a panic attack at London’s St Pancras station. Sat at a table with a pen and paper his scrawling acted as an antidote to the paralysis he felt under the weight of the attack. Starburster’s chorus is punctuated with sharp intakes of breath. The relentless Here’s the Thing meanwhile finds the band in turbodrive, angle grinding guitars hurtling the group forwards, but the words ““To be anesthetized and crave emotion” point to the push and pull of the record. The heartfelt ballad Horseness is the Whatness was written by O’Connell and is the most vulnerable part of the record, his words finding Chatten pondering what makes life worthwhile “Will someone / find out what the word is / That makes the world go round / cos I thought it was love”.
Working with producer James Ford marks the first time Fontaines D.C., which also features Tom Coll on drums and Conor Deegan on bass, has not worked with Dan Carey who is credited with translating the band’s ferocious live sound to record. Instead Ford has helped the band to shift to a more cinematic, ‘studio record’. In addition to the creepy, skulking synths of opener Romance that beckon the listener into the record, this is perhaps most apparent on the album’s centerpiece In The Modern World where palm muted guitars are pierced by stately strings, steady drums and a grand Lana Del Rey style chorus. It is big, expansive and readymade for the arena tour that is to come later this year.
If Romance is a place that Fontaines created to push the boundaries of their creativity and explore themselves and their relationships then Favourite is the perfect pick to close the album. It is at once new and nostalgic and its cheerful skipping riff unites the band around it, expressing their affection for one another through their sound and serving as a reminder that any place is made special by the people in it.