Opening for the Arctic Monkeys: how ‘Sculptures’ walked so ‘Romance’ could run
It’s summer 2024, and Brat has just been released onto the world, with the almost vulgar green artwork being the colour palette upon which the day-to-day dealings of life have been projected. Astonishingly, Fontaines DC‘s album Romance is right beside it with an almost identical colour palette and equally as striking cultural impact. Just as jarring in its marketing appearance and with a green jumpsuit and balaclava-wearing Grian Chatten flying it high, it’s a record that’s become the soundtrack of 2024 alongside Brat and has pushed this band further into the realm of generation-defining.
Immediately capturing the hearts of fans was the record’s opener and title track ‘Romance’. It’s a stunning opening that displays a band now perfectly understanding the more delicate side of their profile – something they came close to in tracks ‘Sunny’ and ‘No’, from their sophomore record, A Hero’s Death. Whereas those tracks were adored more within pockets of devoted fans and existed more as album tracks, ‘Romance’ has instead become a fan favourite for its expansive and dramatic introduction to a now cult record.
Suitably, the song has become a dramatic opening for the album’s arena tour. With a green curtain draped in front of the stage, suspense among the crowd builds feverishly before the eagerly awaited first bass note that opens proceedings. The almost Bond-esque arrangement lays the foundations for Chatten’s most haunting vocal performance to date before crescendoing to a stirring and dramatic finish, at which point the curtain drops to unveil the Irish five-piece.
It’s an unlikely albeit warranted crowd reaction to a song that acts as a significant sound pivot for a band who, to some fans, are still consigned to the garage rock expectations of their first record, Dogrel. But that’s natural – for every fan helping stretch the moulds of their sonic possibilities, there are others standing by the pigeonhole waiting for them to return. But what’s astonishing isn’t the song, instead, the universal acceptance of it amongst fans.
The track has a strikingly similar profile to ‘Sculptures of Anything Goes’, yet a much wider sense of acclaim. The avant-garde third song from Arctic Monkeys’ most recent record, The Car, ominously opens with nothing but a Moog and kick drum, the song sets a similarly villainous tone to ‘Romance’ and sees Alex Turner adopt a more understated vocal approach, akin to whisper. There’s an ever-present sense of foreboding throughout the track before it finally crescendoes with a heavily distorted guitar line and a chilling vocal high note that, to my ear, creates a similar atmosphere to ‘Romance’.
During Arctic Monkeys’ 2023 American tour, Fontaines DC joined them on the road as their support, turning what had, to that point, been a relationship of mutual media appearance flattery into a real-life friendship that no doubt shared a cross-over of ideas. And with Arctic Monkeys boasting the sort of career that Fontaines DC are now set to emulate, the tour would have been somewhat of a crash course in indie mega-stardom.
In an interview with Guitarist, Fontaines DC guitarist Carlos O’Connell spoke about an Epiphone Coronet and how Alex Turner lent him his own model to use in the Romance recording process. “He had one of these, probably [from] a similar year,” O’Connell. “He gave us a loan of it, of his, for the last album. And it ended up being the guitar me and Curley used for the heavier sounds.”
A gesture which would have taken place amid a string of shows where Fontaines DC were stood side of stage, watching Arctic Monkeys curate a set list that weaved in and out of eras and genres, building and releasing tension seamlessly through a web of songs that represented a starkly different band each time. They would have likely learned that a band’s identity is less a particular sound and more a feeling that follows them wherever their sonic exploration goes.
While to many fans, ‘Sculptures of Anything Goes’ remains a crucial part of the set, be it as an opener or somewhere later, it doesn’t quite evoke the same universally adored response as ‘Romance’. Arguably, ‘Romance’ is a more distilled version of a similar idea delivered by a band whose profile has captured the present-day social zeitgeist and, therefore, strikes a more resonated chord. While ‘Sculptures of Anything Goes’ is plainly suited to the harsh grey landscape of noir film thriller, ‘Romance’ feels more like a rousing anthem of defiance in the frankly ominous real world of 2024.
Regardless, it seems an Epiphone Coronet was the bridge between both worlds and a torch that was passed from one great song to the next.
