Fontaines DC
romance
XL
When Fontaines DC When they first burst onto the scene in 2019, I was perhaps wrongly convinced that they could do one thing, albeit pretty well. It’s hard to know where they fit in the never-ending wave of post-punkers from the UK and Ireland, but their range of cheeky riffs and cocky bravado didn’t so much set them apart from the crowd as make them poster boys. A few years later, when I wrote about their 2020 follow-up album, The death of a heroI noticed how the band seemed to be toying with the idea of breaking free from these constraints and were not really satisfied with being what people imagined them to be. Then, in 2022, they released Thin Fia and began to make a compelling case for why they were one of the best rock bands in the world, drowning out their punky roar with a truly vicious sense of fear and unrest.
This brings us to their latest, Romance, an album that definitively refutes any argument of predictability, monotony or boredom. Much of this can be attributed to a new-found sense of freedom for a band that has been through the hype mill for several years. While previous records seemed to be reactions to success, notoriety and the burden of expectations, romance is only interested in responding to the fickle muse that flows through the band. This is often seen throughout the record, for better or for worse. A song like “Bug,” for example, is the sunniest the band have sounded in years, and encompasses sweeping, large-scale Britpop—something that is Thin Fia.
Here you can feel the influence of the band’s new producer, James Ford, whose work with groups such as Arctic Monkeys and The Last Dinner Party betrays a desire for unpretentious bombast. While “Bug” is one of the best songs on the record, its spiritual counterpart, “Motorcycle Boy,” lacks a similar verve. “Sinner shows emotion, provokes them to hang (…) Nobody wants their madness,” sings singer Grian Chatten on the slightly psychedelic, slightly annoying exploration of a disjointed persecution complex that pays off too little.
An unfriendly analysis of romance could make more of this “scratching” description, although I am not sure I can quite achieve it. More than ever, Chatten and Co. are walking a fine line, both in terms of the content of the record and everything that surrounds it. Whether they are processing big emotions, feeling like Theor alternating between James Joyce quotes and original lines like “I live meritorious,” Fontaines are either trying to be the coolest band in the world or aren’t interested in being cool at all, and I’m not sure which I’d prefer. This is most evident here on songs like “In the Modern World” and “Death Kink,” two tracks that come dangerously close to self-parody without ever really going too far. “I don’t feel anything in the modern world” isn’t exactly nuanced, but Chatten gets away with it by demonstrating sheer force of personality. Somehow he manages the same with the latter track, a sneering diatribe that’s both brilliant and absurd, the distinction often blurred.
But if these are examples of the band’s Icarian instincts, then it is romance‘S the first two singles, which prove that they might still make it to the sun. “Starburster”– with Chatten’s wild, rap-inflected delivery and pseudo-industrial beat – shouldn’t really work, but somehow it manages to conjure up a parallel universe in which Damon Albarn manages to both sing and rap on every Gorillaz song with equal aplomb. “Favorite,” is pure pop mastery, a no-brainer that serves as an ideal reflection of the band’s working-class origins without seeming the least bit suspicious. I’m less sure than ever what Fontaines DC is or could be – and for that romance is often a triumph.