Released: 23rd August 2024, Partisan Records
Produced by: James Ford
Vinyl Price: £24.99 (HMV, Clear Vinyl)
Fontaines D.C’s fourth album, aptly entitled Romance, bursts with emotional fluidity, with themes of desire, lust, romance, maturity and fear interwoven throughout the album.
Since the release of the band’s debut album Dogrel, Fontaines D.C. have faced a grapple for image. Their second album, A Hero’s Death, was evidently influenced by the burdens of following a critically acclaimed Debut album, failing to emulate the rawness of Dogrel. The album that followed, Skinty Fia, played with the themes of emotion that Romance overwhelmingly emulated, yet remained more concerned with the diasporic frustrations inherent within the band’s Irish heritage.
Romance, however, is a more intricately crafted and emotionally mature album, remaining more complex than anything before in the Dublin band’s discography. The sound of the album remains deeper, more powerful, and is undoubtedly a triumph in Gothic romance.
This is epitomised immediately in the title track, Romance, in which the album’s exposition is flooded with notions of Darkness which sharply contrast the band’s carefully crafted neon aesthetic. Chatten’s lyricism within the opening track, questioning that “maybe romance is a place”, emulates a Utopian image of the tangibility of emotions, a tangibility that the band continues to explore through tracks such as Desire and Here’s the Thing.
The album’s first single, Starburster (Released 17 April, 2024, Partisan Records), further encapsulates the album’s obsession with emotional ambiguity and the desire to preserve their new found stardom. Chatten proclaims that “I wanna keep all of your charm in a canister”, a powerful contrast between the temporality of emotions and the desire to preserve them. The Guardian’s Alexis Petredis described how the song “depicts a panic attack in a surprisingly funny way” with heavy breathing utilised within the chorus to depict the relationship between desire and panic.
The song’s music video encapsulates the band’s neon aesthetic, contrasting the grey Cumbrian countryside (where Chatten was born) to the Neon tracksuits and colourful hair the band has adopted. Speaking to NME, Chatten described how the aesthetic was created due to the fact that “some of the music is exaggerated, it’s romantic in that sense… the colours…that I hear are not colours that you naturally find or that you would find in nature, the songs sound neon, and kind of ridiculous.”
Octave-leaping song’s such as Here’s The Thing and Death Kink, along with softer more contemplative songs such as Sundowner and second single Favourite represent this neon aesthetic. Contemplative and romanticised images of desire, lust, and longing clash with the lucid and ambiguous colours the band have donned, with guitarist Carlos O’Connell dying his hair pink and green in anticipation for the album.
This, albeit lucid and ambiguous neon image, represents a band who have found themselves within their own art. The band have found their image and identity in an unprecedented way through the album, with the identity of the album reminiscent of the release of Arctic Monkeys AM in 2013. Interestingly, both albums were intricately crafted and produced by British producer James Ford (Foals, Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz) who crafts a deeper, more powerful sound. The Keyboard and string arrangements add depth and create space for Chatten’s new found vocal range, while guitarist Conor Curley finds his voice on tracks such as Sundowner, In the Modern World and Horseness is the Whatness.
The band proclaimed this new found confidence in their 2024 headline set on the Park stage at Glastonbury Festival. The neon colours, deep and meaningful lyrics and emotional ambiguity remained a powerful proclamation of the band’s new found stardom, with strong colours evoking strong emotions. Closing the set with the band’s first two singles Favourite and Starburster exhibits a band proclaiming what they have written is more powerful than anything that they have written before.
Yet despite this new found neon image, the band remains faithful to its Irish heritage. The song Horseness is the Whatness is a reference to Joyce’s Ulysses, reflecting on perhaps the most important emotion in the album, nostalgia.
Lyric of the week:
“To be anaesthetised, and crave emotion” (Here’s The Thing, Fontaines D.C)
This week’s lyric of the week represents the culmination of emotions within Romance, offering a representation of craving emotion while being unable to attain it.