NOISE Annoys comes to you in specially expanded form this week to mark the release of one of the most anticipated Irish albums of the year, Romance, by Dublin post-punkers Fontaines DC.
Having weathered the ‘flash in the pan’ slurs (not to mention barbed accusations of ‘working class cosplay’ from some of their Dub peers) lobbed at them when 2019′s Top 10 debut Dogrel first marked them out as the next export-friendly Great White Hope for Irish alternative rock, the band produced a pair of solid follow-up albums in 2020′s A Hero’s Death, which hit number two, and 2022′s chart-topper Skinty Fia.
Thus, the Fontaines arrive at album number four displaying some well-earned self-confidence to counterbalance what could easily have been creative-block catalysing weight of expectation.
To date, the quintet - Grian Chatten (vocals), Conor ‘Deego’ Deegan (bass), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar) and Tom Coll (drums) - have teased their new magnum opus with a slew of promising singles (and less promising fashion choices - see pics for details) including the thrilling, sonic palette-expanding career highlight Starburster and this week’s final pre-release offering, In The Modern World.
The latter, a muscular string-laden ballad on which they crossbreed earnest, heartfelt pop with brooding, tasteful indie rock - think Frankie Goes To Hollywood covering The National, or vice versa - to offer another tantalising glimpse of what sounds very much like a band hitting the best form of their career to date.
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We’ve also already heard the pleasingly noisy, grungy stylings of Here’s The Thing, and the more straight-ahead indie jangle of Favourite - the latter sounding a bit safe and lightweight by comparison to its fellow album forerunners.
However, the nostalgia-tinged Favourite actually makes a bit more sense when heard in the context of the rest of Romance, where it becomes a bittersweet grace note at the end of an often dark and brooding record largely preoccupied with the blurred lines between love, longing, lust, heartbreak and self-destructive obsession.
“Romance can be a place you’re locked out of, that you’re confounded by,” explains Chatten of the new album.
“Maybe you don’t have the language to gain access. It could be something you’re hellbent on protecting, or an all-out surrender.”
“We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance,” suggests Deego.
“Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as Dogrel. The second album is about that detachment, and the third is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora.
“Now we look to where – and what – else there is to be romantic about.”
Romance opens with a suitably portentous title track, a slow-burner which creeps along atmospherically with sparse, reverb-dripping guitar augmented by occasional crashing percussion and huge minor key synth washes as Chatten channels his inner goth to deliver lines like “Into the darkness again / In with the pigs in the pen” and “I will be beside you / Til you’re dead” before cautiously suggesting that “maybe romance is a place, for me and you”.
It’s one of many fine, tuneful vocals on this record, which finds the singer reigning in his Dublin accent slightly, having often exaggerated it for effect on the previous albums to the annoyance of some listeners (mainly other Dubs, to be fair).
“This is the first album where I’ve actually loved my own voice,” Chatten confesses.
“I sound most like myself on Romance.”
However, lest he be accused of going all ‘crooner’, the aforementioned Starburster is up next, with the singer proudly leaning into his vowels as only a Dub can between panic attack-aping gasps (a stroke of songwriting genius there) on the verses - though Chatten cannily counters this with yet more evidence of his tuneful voice on its pretty, strings-aided middle eight and indeed on the following number, Here’s The Thing, where the melodic vocal provides a deceptively soothing counterpoint to an abundance of caustic guitar and a rumbling rhythm.
“So here’s the thing, I need commotion” advises the Fontaines man on what’s possibly the record’s grittiest, noisiest moment, before the band reclaim the title Desire from Bono and co for a moody, slow(dive) number which swirls, swoons and churns in a shoegazey manner.
Chatten sings of “wretchin’ with desire” all the livelong day (hey, we’ve all been there) before laying his heart bare on mid-album highlight In The Modern World, confessing how it “seems so hard not to be free / When you walk right beside me” and that it “if it matters, you complete me” like a lovesick teen.
Side one concludes in fine style with Bug, a deceptively upbeat ‘three’s company’ boogie with shades of the Smashing Pumpkins’ string-swept ballad Disarm in its powerful acoustic-guitars powered genes, before side two picks up the acoustic baton with Motorcycle Boy’s similarly engineered tale of love at cross-purposes (”It’s fine, I know / You rain, I snow / You stay, I’ll go”), then cranks up the bass for moody, dreamy grunge-gaze, trip/hip-hop-tinged moment Sundowner, which finds guitarist Conor Curley taking the lead vocal and acquitting himself well.
“This record is about deciding what’s fantasy, the tangible world, or where you go in your mind - what represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us,” offers the Fontaines’ other guitar man, Carlos O’Connell, of Romance.
He sticks lines like “Will someone find out what the word is / That makes the world go round / ‘Cause I thought it was love” in Chatten’s mouth on his strings-laden Radio 2-friendly ballad Horseness is the Whatness, a James Joyce-inspired affair which finds the frontman’s voice reverting to appropriate uber-Dub mode for the occasion.
Death Kink returns the Fontaines to rock territory by channeling Nirvana for its brief, squalling guitars-equipped description of a toxic relationship - “When you came into my life I was lost / And you took that shine to me - at what cost / You recognised the smell - human pain / Said I’d learn to love the chain” - before the brighter, breezier Favourite arrives to end Romance on a more upbeat note, musically at least.
“It makes sense when you understand / The misery made me another marked man / And I’m always looking over my shoulder,” sings Chatten on this bittersweet finalé, perhaps having finally realised you must be able to love yourself before you can accept the love of others.
As for Romance, it ain’t dead - in fact, it’s an affair to remember.
