Whether it’s maturing or selling out, the tendency for rock bands to soften and smooth down their sound is understandable and, for fans, usually dispiriting – edge, purity, and strangeness evaporate as the dollars roll in.
With their fourth album Romance, Fontaines DC have not only pulled away from their mordant, Dublin-dank post-punk toward a heady melange of rap, shoegaze, indie, and grunge, they've also become winningly tuneful. The miracle is that they’ve arrived at this eclectic juncture without sacrificing the danger and anxiety, as embedded in the music as in the lyrics, that keeps them thrilling.
The Irish quintet have evolved from the raw, chaotic punk of Dogrel (2019) – its songs more declaimed than sung by Grian Chatten – the Factory-like dirges of A Hero’s Death (2020), and the stark, angular Skinty Fia (2022) to something altogether more sumptuous. They haven't quite delivered the Korn-fed nu-metal cacophany early reports and interviews anticipated, but working for the first time with producer James Ford they've erected a coruscating wall of sound featuring strings and synths – and who would’ve thought that likely?
The album’s shapeshifting genre mash succeeds because the melodies are so strong and because Chatten’s singing often conveys a pleasing vulnerability. “Here’s the Thing”, "Bug", "Favourite", and the Lana Del Ray-influenced LA dystopia of “In the Modern World” are the group’s catchiest songs yet.
If there’s nothing as Gothic and regretful on “Romance” as “In ár gCroíthe go deo" or as epically political-personal as “I Love You”, Chatten sustains the Fontaines' aura of existential dislocation and emotional disarray by evoking an image of a 21st century Ginger Man (more so than a Leopold Bloom) stumbling through the global madhouse.
What separates the character from JP Donleavy’s dissolute scoundrel is that he has a conscience and a ragged, needy faith in true love. “Maybe romance is the place… for me… and you...and you...and – ” Chattan croons warily over the eponymous opener, though as Conor Deegan’s ominous bass line, an insistent plink, and an industrial din build into orchestral detonations, you wonder how sustainable “romance” is, whether it means romantic love or art as a creative salve for the world’s woes.
Chattan tests amour’s limits on “Starburster,” the album’s second and most rousing track. An accordion-like mellotron and a chirruping piano decorously announce his surging evocation of a panic attack he had at St Pancras Station. It’s a dog’s bollocks of a danceable rock-rap song, the only one here, though the singer interrupts his frantic stream-of-consciousness flow to soulfully honour his partner for succouring him: “Hit me for the day / For the light/ That you suffered / To come by.” She provides him with something else – “momentary blissness” – in the chorus, each repeated line stamped with an appreciatively ladsy “ooh” in the backing vocals.
A rare spasm of manic buzzsaw riffing from Carlos O’Connell, the crunchier of the Fontaines’ two guitarists, introduces “Here’s the Thing”, which has nothing to do with Joe Biden but is an empathetic love song – upbeat despite Chattan’s gasping for breath – that recognizes the girl’s craving for emotional connection.
“Desire” is almost a Slowdive threnody with Chattan sounding a little like Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold as he aches to reach a lover against the backdrop of a surreal memory of a haunted time and place, but it could only be a Fontaines number. Despite its Smiths vibe of disdainful self-reflection, the same goes for the jangly, sweeping “Bug”, in which the desperate narrator, seemingly cut off from the one he loves after a not unrewarding fling, finds himself anaesthetised with drugs.
Then, amid all this wreckage – and following the morose “Motorcyle Boy”, dissonantly drawled by Chattan – there’s an oasis: “Sundowner,” a well of shoegaze yearning with a trip-hop rhythm. Penned by Conor Curley, the fuzzier of the Fontaines’ two guitarists and mellifluously sung by him, it's an airy delight.
“Horseness Is the Whatness” – contributed by Carlos O’Connell, the crunchier guitarist – recalls the “maybe” of the title song. “Will someone/ Find out what the word is / That makes the world go round/ Cause I thought it was love,” Chattan frets over a stately beat. The song (its title Stephen Dedalus’s phrase pondering the nature of empirical realities and the nature of essences in James Joyce’s Ulysses) closes out in a war zone, the string musicians gamely playing on as drummer Tom Coll and a clattering synth drop the bombs.
In “Death Kink,” a fuzz-heavy grunge rocker seared in the middle by O’Connell’s longest and steeliest riff, Chattan gives voice to a dupe incredulous that the lover whom he thought had rescued him ended up doubling his pain. “Amazing stars from the drink,” he hyperventilates mid song before it grinds him up.
Coming like a warm bath after that, the closer, “Favourite,” gorgeously reminiscent of New Order’s “Age of Consent”, is about coming back to a city – or coming down from a trip – and finding everything changed. The singer is aging, feels trapped and worn, and dreams of escape, but the memory of a passion, whether for a town or the love of his life, consoles him: “But if there was lightning in me / Then you know who it was for.” It’s a good place for the Fontaines to end the beginning of what could prove an electrifying second act.
