The Fontaines DC are looking for a new romance
“We've always had this sense of idealism and romanticism. Each album moves further and further away from looking at this through the lens of Ireland: in “Dogrel” (the Mercury Prize-nominated debut album) was direct, the second album (“A Hero's Death”nominated for a Grammy, ed.) talks about this detachment, while the third (“Skinty Fia”, ed.) talks about Irishness displaced in the diaspora. Now let's try to understand where and in what else there is to be romantic“. Fontaines DC (here is our latest interview) have revealed the details of their long-awaited fourth album, “Romance”, out August 23rd for XL Recordings, no longer for Partisan Records.
The new single
A detail that is anything but marginal and which photographs the broadening of the band's boundaries. “Romance” is the band's first album with producer James Ford and is presented as their “most adventurous” chapter sonically.. The new project from the Dublin band, now living in London, follows the success of their acclaimed 2022 album, “Skinty Fia”, which entered at number one in the UK and Irish charts and saw the group receive a number of accolades, including “International Group of the Year” at the 2023 BRIT Awards. Fontaines DC's latest creative evolution is the single “Starburster”. Inspired by a panic attack that singer Grian Chatten had in London's St Pancras station, the song is punctuated by sharp, ferocious breaths. The song is accompanied by a music video by director Aube Perrie (already working with Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, The Hives) which captures the intensity of the song through images.
The reference points
“Romance” aims to be Fontaines DC's most ambitious album and its eleven tracks collect the new ideas developed between the band members: Grian Chatten (voice), Carlos O'Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (low) e Tom Coll (drums). These ideas crystallized during the tour of the United States and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys, in which the five members of the band shared music and found a connection, real and otherwise, with artists who became sources of inspiration: the attitude and aesthetic of names like Shygirl and Sega Bodegathe brazen sonic palette of hip hop and heavy metal, Mos Def, A$AP Ferg, OutKast and Korn, are some of the references cited by the group in the project presentation note. Fontaines DC had some free time to get more precise ideas of what their future music could be: O'Connell went to La Mancha in Spain and became a father, Chatten spent time in Los Angeles and Deegan in Paris. They have put down deeper roots in London. Each member pushed himself beyond his own boundaries, experimenting with riffs, chord progressions and distant textual references, without however intending to record a record straight away. After wrapping up their stateside tour in the fall of 2023, they spent a month writing together againthree weeks of pre-production in a north London studio and a month in a castle near Parissleeping among the studio equipment, completely immersed.
Live in Italy in 2024
Speaking about the theme of the album, Chatten is reminiscent of Katsuhiro Ôtomo's Akira anime, where the sparks of love develop despite the vortex of technological degradation and political corruption that surrounds the characters. “I am fascinated by this theme: falling in love at the end of the world – she says – the album is about protecting that little flame. The closer the catastrophe comes, the more precious it becomes” While O'Connell adds: “This record is about deciding what fantasy is: the tangible world or the one you experience in your mind. What represents reality more? For us it is an almost spiritual question“. The album will be partly presented in a world tour that will begin this summer, with stops at the Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds and two Italian dates on June 23 at the festival The first summer at Lido Di Camaiore and on June 25th at Rock In Romeat the Auditorium Parco Della Musica.
