Fontaines DC: Reshaping the concept of modern romance
If you had told Fontaines DC back when they first formed in 2014 that their most successful album thus far would be a neon colour-fest with a huge pink love heart adorning the centre, they probably would have laughed in your face.
They were a post-punk band focused on spotlighting the troubles, triumphs, and tribulations of life in Ireland – what do you mean they’d reach universal acclaim by venturing down the lovey-dovey road? It’s honestly enough to make you feel sick.
But that’s the thing. Fontaines DC have undeniably changed tack since they started out 11 years ago, but this doesn’t mean they have lost a single ounce of their fire or integrity along the way. Romance may be their defining record at this point in time, but contrary to what the name may indicate, their sound is not a suitable soundtrack for a landscape of chocolates and roses.
Indeed, every precondition of pink-hued courtship is something the band completely threw out the window when they first conceived of the idea for the album, as well as their previous commitment to showcasing the Irish environment. It may sound brutal, but this was just a necessary evil in order to capture the true, terrifying dystopia they were trying to convey. To this end, the concept of Romance was no longer something cuddly and sweet, but instead disturbingly dark.
But how can this possibly be, when that notion itself is seemingly completely at odds with the meaning of the word itself? For frontman Grian Chattan, it’s less about love and more about delusion. “We romanticise things in order to process them and contextualise them. Or: to have them touch you, to make yourself sensitive towards them, you romanticise things, life in general,” he explained in a previous interview.
Yet, in Chattan’s eyes, there is a point somewhere on this warping road where one can completely lose sight of the real world. “I like the idea, in a melancholy way, of completely committing yourself to that fantasy,” he added. “Of taking both your feet off the ground and just allowing absolute delusional romance to wash over you and never check back into the reality, whatever form that might take.”
If that’s the journey that the album Romance is taking the listener on, it’s certainly one with dizzying highs amid the darkness. Between the environmental numbness of ‘In the Modern World’ to the emotional juxtapositions of ‘Death Kink’ or ‘Favourite’, the concept of love is instead readdressed as being detached from reality, something that the outlet of romanticism is turning more and more towards in the modern age as the starkness of society creeps closer and closer to your door.
For the small minority who wished for the band to stay in the lane of ‘Boys in the Better Land’ and Skinty Fia, Romance would have undoubtedly proved a bitter disappointment. But then again, how would it be possible to find sadness in delusion, anything except contentment in this mirage? No, in the world of Fontaines DC, love is not a comfort blanket. It’s the indescribable place you go to feel nothing, even despite all the horrors of your life. That, folks, is modern romance.
