A Lighter August: Fontaines D.C.'s 'Romance'
August has never been of great comfort to me, only in that it’s a month-long reminder that September is coming. But now that I don’t start uni until near-October, this has felt like the longest August of my life.
In all honestly, I abhor summer. The world seems to undergo such a horrendous transformation as I become more narrow-sighted, pessimistic, asocial, depressed. And the amount of back pain I’ve accumulated across three months is frankly unjustified.
But Fontaines D.C.’s newest album Romance has been a very comforting reprieve to stop my racing brain and just fall into the wave. August’s soundtrack - enough of a thorough distraction to process some things.
Recently, I’ve been in awe of how easily music makes me feel. Simply put, it’s magic. Being immersed in other arts, I only managed to drag myself to Grade 5 on the piano (scraping a pass and crying through all my scales in the exam), as well as intermittent stints of electric guitar, which were always motivated by others rather than myself (I haven’t touched it since I had to). Thus the creation of music has always seemed unreachable to me.
Romance isn’t perfect by any means, but it encapsulates so much as a modern album that came at just the right time. It’s magic. And for that I hugely appreciate it, so here’s a dedication - to Romance.
Romance
Immediately, I feel like I’m crawling out of a sewer - fitting, for August. The way the song shifts from minor to major and back again is perfectly unsettling, drawing you into a kind of destructive romance you can only imagine as physical retching. And the pitch-shifts, god. As everything seems to twist, the stage is prepared.
into the darkness again
in with the pigs in the pen
god knows i love you
screws in my head
★★★★½
Starburster
This is one I cannot not headbang to, and its placement after Romance makes it hit all the more. Every little addition - the keys, the mellotron, the backing vocals, pieces of guitar riff - layers to complete not only something of sonic ingenuity but also slot into the catchy rhythm. It’s simple, with never too much at once, but equally enough changes in sonic landscape to make the vocals the centrepiece. The smooth bridge engrossed in strings also gives us a taste of what’s ahead, before catapulting us back into a final, menacing chorus complete with blaring synth, the pitch-shifting of which plays a vital role in representing a moral twistedness of the titular romance.
i wanna keep all of your charm in a canister
do you inspire like the same did salinger?
★★★★★
Here’s The Thing
The introductory riff runs through my head multiple times a day. Packaged innocently, the song acts as reminder of an inevitable return to destructive romance, despite best intentions. Personally, the chorus is a little too repetitive to become a favourite, with the verses and particularly the bridge a little short. However, being sub-3 minutes, and having Chatten’s charisma flowing through each and every word, Here’s the Thing makes sure to not overstay its welcome.
★★★½
Desire
Though the instrumentation and melodies are not the most interesting, the lyrical matter is thick. One thing the band achieves well here is communicating its darkness. What more, it poses a yearning question with a philosophical dimension: why is our desire of such weight to us, and why does it end up destroying us in such a lengthy struggle? The repetition of the backing vocals are a true highlight: the wispy ‘desire’s mark the seeming endlessness of the process, extending all the way to the end of the song.
deep they’ve designed you
from cradle to pyre
in the mortal attire
desire
★★★
In The Modern World
I went to sleep after listening to this and it was the soundtrack for all of my dreams that night. Sad. Romantic. Epic. Simultaneously blissful and apathetic. The breathiness at the end of each phrase fits perfectly with the gentle swell throughout, and the indulgent call-and-response moments really complete this song as one to rival other songs about drugs in Los Angeles (yes, really). Endlessly ethereal and perfect to encapsulate the feeling of dreaming awake.
seems so hard not to be free
when you walk
right beside me
★★★★½
Bug
Laidback, story-telling, and Oasis-like, Bug has a lovely chord progression that makes you feel like you’re walking down a street - a good song to make you feel like you’ve got out the house even when you haven’t. Lyrical and thick in details that are woven carefully throughout each verse - specifics such as ‘she’s a MUA at Carnegie Hall’ make listening a mesmerising experience as you assemble elements of memory in each verse’s unique experience.
well, we shacked up swift abandonment way
catch sweet rain inside a beret★★★★½
Motorcycle Boy
Much like Desire, this song isn’t my favourite sonically, but I massively appreciate how personal it is. The intro is intriguing and immediately marks it apart from the rest of the tracks, but the hook isn’t typically ‘hook-y’, rather giving the impression of spiralling - a relentless loop of building dread. With something so deeply introspective, you end up feeling utterly lost.
★★★
Sundowner
A faraway tune about longing. Honestly, not the biggest fan of having two to three chords throughout; the melody is also a bit repetitive and the drums are kind of ehhh. The vocals are produced through a haze, which is a new direction for this album, however, in the right-place/right-time (the middle of the night, thoughts exhausted), this is quite a good one to lull you into a thoughtless sleep.
★½
Horseness Is The Whatness
An unusual title that derives from James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ - should probably be prescribed reading before delving into any Fontaines D.C. album with the number of references it gets in their discography. Though the slowest song on the album, it more than makes up for it in character. The strings throughout are comforting with lovely depth, cello and all, and Chatten’s similar melodic sequence higher up the stave gives a greater intensity further into the song. But alongside this, industrial percussive sounds are used to break up the lull masterfully. It feels so familiarly miscellaneous: ‘I read it in some book / or an old packet of smokes’, drawing you through simple meditations before finally becoming consumed by industrial sound - leaving you with a song that feels fully complete.
i guess i get the gist
there’s not that much to miss
you choose or you exist
★★★★★
Death Kink
Self-destuctive. Sticky. Desperate. In opposition to the last few tracks, Death Kink drags us right back to the album’s initial grittiness, the lyrical matter bringing us elements of the opening track, and the way Chatten says ‘stars’ hearkening back to Starburster. It poses as a last hurrah to the spite of this album: the album’s catchiest chorus, a whole guitar solo (cor, they’re really spoiling us now), and one of the final moments where we can really hear Chatten without any instrument backing. Definitely my favourite to listen to.
★★★★½
Favourite
This must sound like Ireland in a bottle. Never been, but solely for this song I’ve committed myself to going someday. The song structure is also interesting: though you can class it into the typical verse/chorus/bridge, each section feels like a chorus in its own right. An endless ode to the best of summer that reminds you that at least some of it was worth it.
shoulder bounce through the frame of a door
tuned into shape like a stone on the shore
but if there was lightning in me
you'd know who it was for★★★★★
This might have seemed like a five-minute read, but in reality, it’s taken me weeks to get round to finishing it. I’m hoping I can get to moving on from this album and this summer as quickly as possible, to be honest. But until then: thank you, Romance. And thank you for reading. All the best.