Warm, Fuzzy Romance
Fontaines D.C.'s Romance is an irresistible sonic journey that feels like floating through a dreamy, drunken haze. With lush, varied soundscapes and a mesmerizing blend of influences, the album captivates from start to finish, looping endlessly like an addictive spell. This post-punk gem is a daring departure, yet unmistakably Irish - leaving you bewitched and begging for more, just like in every romance.
source: Fontaines D.C. (Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan, Grian Chatten and Tom Coll), photographed by Theo Cottle, via Rolling Stone.
The Irish post-punk rock band, Fontaines D.C., delivered their fourth studio album on August 23rd and I haven’t been able to stop it since then (send help, please).
Picture this: you’re at a party while slightly intoxicated, you close your eyes, catch your lover’s hand, and let it drive you wherever it wants to. For as much as you know, you could as well be on the moon but you give up your senses and trust the soft hints through the darkness while the music changes.
This is what Romance sounds like. It starts and it ends. But you cannot stop the automatic reproduction from letting it start all over and throw you through this illusion again and again. Before you even notice, the title track’s first carousel-like notes are already there to deceive you and let you hop on the loop once again.
The album comes two years after their critically acclaimed Skinty Fia, which relied as the previous two projects on the Celtic culture in which the Dublin-native band was brought up. The five members met while attending music college in Dublin and connected over their shared love for poetry, whose overwhelming presence leads their music no matter the themes reigning in each project.
Romance it’s a step away from the Celtic world and the heavier post-punk beats: the result of different influences and inspirations that the band wanted to put into form, while still sounding incredibly Irish to me, even if implicitly.
The 11-track album builds an alternate world and navigates the themes of love, family, and friendship while touching every soundscape possible for a band like them: the melancholy of ‘In the Modern World’, the boldness of ‘Here’s The Thing’, the darkness of ‘Romance’ and the brightness of ‘Favourite’. But even so, the length and breadth of Romance sounds like their most cohesive work, capable of embracing all the influences and inputs each member had to bring to the table.
You can name so many resemblances. Nevertheless, everything sounds so Fontaines D.C.-esque with many daring new elements in the arrangements that just have you by the throat. Like Grian Chatten’s voice, the lead singer, showing a whole new side of its magneticness, especially when counterpointing the rest of the band’s back vocals in newfound moments in some of the songs.
After producing with their long-time collaborator Dan Carey, this time the band relied on a producer connected with some of the biggest names of the British scene, like Artic Monkeys, Blur, and Florence and The Machine: James Ford.
I doubt that his presence is the sole cause of the drug-like effect this album has on me. It has been a while since I last had an album on repeat like this: I was three in the back of my parents’ car traveling across Ireland at the onset of the 2000s, with a cassette tape of The Corrs’ In Blue. It could go on and on and you wouldn’t even notice when it started or finished, and it’s my only memory of that trip. I fear it might be some kind of Irish curse (or blessing).
