Romance (Fontaines D.C. album)

Romance is the fourth studio album by Irish rock band Fontaines D.C. Announced on 17 April 2024 along with the lead single, "Starburster", it was released on 23 August 2024. It also features the singles "Favourite", "Here's the Thing", "In the Modern World" and "Bug". It is their first release on XL Recordings, after the band left Partisan Records, and was produced by James Ford.
The album received acclaim from critics. In the United Kingdom, it sold more than double the first-week total of its number-one predecessor Skinty Fia. It debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart behind Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet. Romance received two nominations at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards: Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Music Performance (for "Starburster").
Grian Chatten told Mojo that they decided to step away from their Irish-centric themes for the album as it would have been too difficult to "sound like Ireland" while crafting a futuristic and dystopian vision called Romance. According to Chatten, the songwriting process was, as usual for the band, a "constant process" that happened between touring. The "spiritual form" of the album first emerged when he wrote the track "In the Modern World". He compared the process to soundtracking a city for which he finally understood the "colour and the year and the atmosphere and the temperature" of. The album was influenced by several locations as well as "certain atmospheres at certain times", including Tokyo. Chatten stated, "We write a lot more based on visual references than musical references. It's easier to be original." The album was also inspired by Japanese manga and Italian cinema. The album is produced by James Ford. Drummer Tom Coll said that Romance was, in some ways, like the band's first-ever studio record in that they deliberately moved away from their long-held "if we can't play it live, let's not do it" mentality.
"Horseness Is the Whatness", was written by guitarist Carlos O'Connell, and the title was taken from Ulysses. The lyrics to "Here's the Thing" were built off the back of an argument between Chatten and O'Connell, and "In the Modern World" was inspired by Lana Del Rey's "strain of disillusionment". "Favourite" originally had twelve verses written by Chatten, however, it was shortened to just four by the rest of the band. And, to Conor Curley, his lead vocals on "Sundowner" were by accident.
Frontman Grian Chatten noted the influence of Dylan Thomas and the book Land Sickness by Nikolaj Schultz as well as the films Sunset Boulevard, The Great Beauty and Wings of Desire on his lyricism.
In 2023, the band supported Arctic Monkeys on their North American tour and watched Blur play Wembley Stadium. Chatten said, "I didn't want to write, like, a "Champagne Supernova", but I did want to do something that felt like it was deep within and far without." Guitarist Conor Curley found himself listening to much of Massive Attack and Portishead, as well as "Freedom Fighter" by Bowery Electric – feeling inspired by music that's already considered "classic". Drummer Tom Coll got "set off on a hip-hop vibe" – partially due to playing drums on the Kneecap album Fine Art – and immersed himself in grunge, going on to say he "probably left the house [Recording Studio] only three times in three weeks".
The lead single "Starburster" saw guitarist Carlos O'Connell inspired by Deftones and Alice in Chains. It contains rapping, which Chatten said was influenced by Korn in a "tongue-in-cheek" manner, a band that "scared the shit out of me as a kid".
"In the Modern World" is inspired by Akira's "depiction of apocalyptic emotion", with Chatten mentioning "..I can hear the buildings collapsing." Conor Deegan mentioned beat poets in reference to the song's feel, saying: "That song, I get visions of On the Road, Jack Kerouac, driving through the desert in America, the beat-up 1950s car, right? And they stop into the motel for some warm cans of beer. The AC isn't working. The fan is spinning half-speed. All that shit."
The horror-inspired music video for single "Here's the Thing" drew comparisons to the films The Lost Boys (1987) and Phenomena (1985). It was directed by Luna Carmoon, who confirmed the influence of Phenomena, and commented:
Keith Cameron of Mojo rated it 4 out of 5 stars, stating, "Inspired by Japanese manga and Italian cinema, the Irish quintet's fourth searches for truth in a world gone wrong." Cameron continued: "The more conventionally arranged Bug still has him [Grian] threading words like a tessellated moving pavement [...]. With the music's adjacency to "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", it occurs that just like The Smiths, this is a rock band with both a fresh vocabulary and behavioural code."
Shaun Curran, while writing for Record Collector, gave the album 4 stars out of 5, concluding, "It's startling to think how far Fontaines D.C. have travelled creatively in five years, through an agitated, restlessness, a vivid imagination and courage to try the new." Curran also named "Favourite" as the best song on the album, describing it as a "sound-of-the-summer" track where shoegaze meets The Cure.
The Irish Times's Tony Clayton gave the album a 4.5 out of 5 stars, concluding the band's evolution through the album as, "It's all quite a remove from "Boys in the Better Land", "Liberty Belle", "Too Real" and "Big", but Fontaines DC rightly ask what the point is if you have to ask permission to evolve." The last track "Favourite" also was named as the best song with "irresistible jangly guitars and, perhaps, is a sign of what to expect on album number five".
Alexis Petridis, The Guardian's head rock and pop critic, named Romance as "album of the week" - giving the album 5 out of 5 stars - and surmised the impact as: "Romance is more straightforwardly approachable than any Fontaines DC album to date – you can easily imagine "Desire" provoking an immense crowd into singing along. But it doesn't sacrifice any of the band's potency in the process: thrillingly, it still carries the same grimy, careworn, aggressive qualities as their previous work."
Uncut's Daniel Dylan rated it an 8/10, describing the album and the band's sonic evolution as, "From the electronic slow-build moody ruminations of Romance via the panic-attack-inspired "Starburster" or the swooping harmonies of "In the Modern World", it feels as though the band have carved out a new sonic space for them to operate in while still retaining their own identity."
NME gave the album five stars, calling it "an album that charts the devastating duality of its title." They called Romance the band's "most considered and intricately crafted release yet".
On 28 November 2024, Romance won the Album Award at the Rolling Stone UK Awards 2024, and was called by the magazine "an instant classic".
Fontaines D.C
Additional credits