From those plastered across them after the sonic rapture of their 2019 post-punk staple debut Dogrel to live, backing away from their rabble-rousing entries, it should come as no surprise that the band in their return for album four – Romance – are sporting 90s-drenched street glam and toting a multitude of sounds that defy even these aesthetic expectations.
While initial offering "Starburster" builds upon 2022's Skinty Fia titular metallic cut with its heavy, panic-attack-emulating industrial ferocity, each track of Romance presents as a different – and more importantly – a new facet of the Dublin quintet. Contorting any expectations levied upon them with a more grandiose ambition, one befitting a band continually dominating arenas and fields, Fontaines once again dream big and make it a reality.
Beginning with a foreboding aura, Romance's title track echoes with the album's thesis: "Maybe romance is a place for me and you", vocalist Grian Chatten ponders in the track's later moments. It's this idea that permeates their fourth outing – what is romance on a granular level, and what does Fontaines' relationship with it sound like?
In answering that, Chatten's voice finds new facets. Falling
throughout to dramatic whispered hushes, breathy flourishes, hip-hop
flows, and confident highs – the rigorous touring life is paying
dividends to his abilities. While most bands find their second outing
toting the wears of the road, Fontaines' fourth is where the combustible
nature of touring marries creative tension resulting in this emboldened
new entry.
Switching to James Ford for production (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Jessie
Ware), Ford's renowned ability to bring together ambitiously decadent
ideas reigns supreme here. Helping orchestrate a throughline of this
patchwork of ideas pays dividends as the grander character and
geographical work of their past makes way for more personal offerings as
they turn inward, processing the world they inhabit, rather than the
one they've mused upon previously. Songs fall in and out of focus,
either through bleary eyes ("Sundowner") or juddering to life ("Death Kink"), this is an
entity to be devoured as one: "Horseness Is The Whatness" shudders
itself into an entirely new life-form, while "In A Modern World" – an
album standout – delicately matches Chatten's opines a dystopian world
with an oddly welcoming embrace of loneliness, twinned with a darling
backing vocal from bassist Connor 'Deego' Deegan.
Musically, Fontaines are a band who have always moved with purpose,
and in this instance, there are still the bones of their past
(post-punk droning etc) but now they confidently move in any
direction. Their pulling from new inspirations and ideas exposing their personalities more than ever – the likes of
Korn, Massive Attack, anime Akira – blends seamlessly with their
already established motives as Chatten's lyrics shine with poetic charm
as ever: "I wanna head to a mass and get cast in it / That shit's
funnier than any A-Class, innit?" ("Starbuster").
The resoundingly catchy and chipper "Favourite" rounds off Romance,
the opposite end of the opening track's woozy and ponderous rainbow.
Bestowing a torrent of melody in its repetitive guitar line and calling
chorus, it soars euphorically, before the album falls away leaving nothing but a yearning for
more – and what could be more romantic than that?
