Fontaines DC - Romance

One imagines there’s a fidgetiness at Fontaines DC’s core; that the very same second they’re put in a box, a pathological need to contradict both themselves and the putter-inner immediately ensues – an irl case of ‘whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not’, if you will. Come out the gates with a fast-rising debut album packed with festival-ready bangers? Follow it by eschewing any semblance of immediacy, obviously. Now, having been lumped in with an ever-growing bandwagon of miserable men in dark colours channelling worldly frustrations into post-punk flavoured song, the obvious move is to turn hypercolour.

Most of ‘Romance’ does not, in fact, follow the wholly ‘90s baggy rave-up of blistering opening track ‘Starburster’, but that the outfit would choose to share the most sonically provocative cut first is as playful a move as the song itself. And it’s that playfulness – a real sense of taking the art seriously but themselves not at all – that runs throughout the record, from the minute the opening title track begins to thaw from its gloomy, wholly Radiohead turn, to the jolly jangle of closer ‘Favourite’. The production is maximalist to the point where one wonders, if they’d asked producer James Ford for a kitchen sink, his only response would be: ‘How do we mic that up?’. The space allowed for sonic play lets the otherwise as-before songwriting breathe, less encumbered, perhaps, by how it might be perceived. On the ‘90s extravagance of ‘In The Modern World’, it’s provided by strings, coupled with boyband-esque backing vocals; there’s ghostly repetition and rollicking drums on ‘Motorcycle Boy’, while ‘Desire’ is pure shoegazey euphoria. ‘Here’s The Thing’ and ‘Death Kink’, even moreso, revel in their huge choruses – the latter a deliciously grungy cut. That Fontaines DC are accomplished, assured songwriters and musicians is well-established by now, but it’s such a joy to hear they are also (whisper it) quite fun.