Image by Theo Cottle //
Five out of five highlighter green balaclavas.
From the moment that ‘Starburster’ first hit our earholes, it’s safe to say that Romance became the most anticipated album of the year, the one that would soundtrack the next however many months, and with each repeat play of the Gondryesque ‘Starburster’ video clip, the suspense has only built.
With elevated production and a deeper pool of influences and sounds to pull from, the band have been able to take their existing key ingredients – Grian’s deliver and their raw ability to pace a song – and offer up something that sounds like the Fontaines D.C. from an alternate universe; one that’s a little more magical and much more depressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHocVRUlvkk
They’re aware of this too. Their collective new look which has seen them swap out sweatshirts and button-ups for bright tracksuits, fluro hair, and speed dealers, leading people throw out multiple theories. Is it a joke? A social commentary? Are they just having fun with it?
It feels like the right spot to start a chat with the band’s drummer Tom Coll who dials in from his London home a few days before Romance‘s official release.
“I feel like there’s certain expectations put on five guys in a band that they should just wear retro sixties revivalist clothing. If it was in any other genre of music, it’d be celebrated to use fashion as a form of expression. So it’s been funny to watch people in the indie guitar world freak out about it,” Tom says.
“For the last few records we just wore whatever we had in our wardrobe, but I feel like to actually taking a bit of time and getting into the creative expression of clothes as well has been a really fun experience for us.”
More so than ‘Starburster’, the title track is the biggest window into what lies ahead on the album. ‘Romance’ is a lovestruck poem with sonic bombs going off all around it – it’s all about to end, but it’s beautiful.
“I feel like we talked a lot on the record of kind of, a lot of the writing references were definitely movies and feelings rather than musical references,” Tom says. “And a lot of the chat was around a romance in a dystopian world where the whole world around you is ending, but you’re still finding space for romance and space for love.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCPCE0sjUTU
Spending hours on tour buses and planes (notably they supported Arctic Monkeys throughout the US in 2023) gave the band lots of time to absorb the TV shows and films that would shape their vision for Romance. It was a new way of approaching the construction of a record for them; building something with imagery in mind.
“This is the first record where we went in with an overarching kind mood that we really wanted to convey, almost storyboarding in the studio using movies as a visual reference,” Tom says. “We were watching a lot of Akira and stuff like that after the whole Tokyo experience as well. I feel like we were super inspired by the kind of modernism of it all.”
“We watched this trilogy called the Pusher trilogy by Nicolas Winding Refn. The soundtrack was a lot of 90s grungy kind of White Zombie and stuff like that. That definitely inspired a lot of the heavier side of the record as well. I feel like the soundtrack of a movie can kind of bleed into how you actually perceive it and how you kind of feel it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWsF-gFGGlo
Musically you can hear the eery undertones of bands like This Hear and Slint mixed with the vocal overdubs and bombastic expression of Pixies. Like the bands new aesthetic, elements of the 90s shine through alongside their everpresent Britpop balladry and ability to produce a line that feels like a punch straight to the guts.
“I was getting into lots of like shoegazey, kind of sludgy kind of stoner rock and like hardcore stuff. And then a lot of the lads were getting into hip hop,” Tom explains. “But I feel like when we went on tour with the Monkeys at the end of last year, Smashing Pumpkins were such a big mainstay in our pre-show ritual. Their album Adore is amazing. It’s obviously super 90s alt rock with these amazing kind of electronic influences to it and all the string arrangements on it as well are so beautiful. So I feel like that was a huge cornerstone in terms of a musical reference point.”
The record has already attracted five-star reviews from mastheads around the world, while some “fans” online have found it hard to grasp the bigger themes at play in Romance combined with the band’s new look. The scrutiny is part of the game Tom explains.
“I feel like if your first few records gain any kind of traction, there’s going to be people who don’t like what you do if you move on as a band. And I feel like there’s nothing more boring than a band rehashing the same records six, seven times, you know. There’s nothing exciting about that.”
“The good reviews are great to get but it doesn’t really, for me personally, mean a whole lot. It means a lot for our label and our management, and that’s great for them. But I feel like in terms of how the record is received, it’s always a really good litmus test when you play it live. You can kind of gauge the reaction of people much better then and it’s way more meaningful. It’s a shared space and it’s an experience rather than reading an article. That’s where a band should get its kudos from, for sure.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMhks08v0EU
With top-tier slots at Reading and Leeds happening over the weekend, the band won’t have much time to soak up the written response to Romance. And even though those shows will surely go down in history for Fontaines D.C. diehards, the band’s career ambitions go beyond massive live performances.
“As a band starting out, we had two tunes and we were insanely overly ambitious. It was like, ‘We’re going to be the biggest band in the world.’ So I feel like that kind of youthful ambition and drive does kind of wear off when you get a little bit older and a little bit closer to 30, but at the same time, yeah, I think we’re an ambitious band for sure,” Tom says. “It shifts at some point, I think, and I feel like our ambition now is to keep making music that we’re enjoying and that we’re excited about. That’s where we’re aiming for in terms of what we want rather than playing arenas.”
Buy/stream Romance here.
