After the release of their critically-acclaimed, chart-topping Skinty Fia LP in 2022, the Irish post-punk band have left their fans pining for more – and now that wait is soon set to end.
Romance will arrive with production duties from James Ford, and will mark the band’s first album with XL Recordings, having parted ways with Partisan Records.
The announcement comes via the release of lead single ‘Starburster’, which represents one of the band’s more experimental releases to date – have a listen via its arresting (if a little sinister) video below.
Although the band has been relatively quiet on the release front over the last two years (albeit with frontman Grian Chatten releasing a solo album of his own), they’ve not gone unnoticed, after their second BRIT award for ‘Best International Group’.
The forthcoming album’s genesis is said to have arisen during the band’s tour support for Arctic Monkeys in the US; after which Grian, guitarists Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley, bassist Conor Deegan, and drummer Tom Coll temporarily went their separate ways to expand their own musicality, before reconvening with even greater prowess.
Describing Romance’s album title, Deegan has shared: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as Dogrel.
“The second album (A Hero’s Death) is about that detachment, and the third (Skinty Fia) is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”
Adding to that, and on that theme, Chatten recalls Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s anime Akira, where the embers of love develop despite a maelstrom of technological degradation and political corruption around its characters.
“I’m fascinated by that – falling in love at the end of the world,” he says. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger the armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes.”
Fontaines D.C. have a busy summer ahead already, with the band set to take to the stage at Glastonbury, and Reading & Leeds Festivals as well as a number of other dates across Europe.
See the full Romance artwork and tracklisting below.
1. Romance
2. Starburster
3. Here’s The Thing
4. Desire
5. In The Modern World
6. Bug
7. Motorcycle Boy
8. Sundowner
9. Horseness is the Whatness
10. Death Kink
11. Favourite
