Fontaines D.C. on How The Cure, ‘Akira’ & ‘Being In a Better Place’ Inspired Its Glorious New Album ‘Romance’
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but “here’s the thing” has become an overused thing. The old expression is suddenly the go-to for anyone from influencers to politicians to news correspondents trying to make a point. “Here’s the thing,” like “at the end of the day” or “wait, whaaat? before it, has become a hackneyed verbal tic. But here’s the thing: “Here’s The Thing” also happens to be the title of a strong contender for Greatest Song of 2024. It’s the rip-snorting third single from Romance, the glorious fourth album from Fontaines D.C., out Friday (Aug. 23), on which the Irish post-punk band breaks with its past in almost every way.
“I think change was just generally a very enticing thing for us,” says Grian Chatten, Fontaines’ poet-cum-frontman, who in only a half a decade has become one of the most compelling figures in rock. “We wanted to really indulge in something new, and we didn’t want to risk it being only a half-step. And I think the more changes there were around us, the better.”
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It’s early May, and I am sitting on the patio of a hotel in Brooklyn with Chatten — who is sporting a city-appropriate Yankees jersey and wraparound shades — after he suggests we talk outdoors so he can smoke a couple roll-your-owns over the hour. The band is in town to do a one-off underplay gig to jump start the record’s cycle, and to play the television debut of “Starburster,” the LP’s biting, driving first single, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Launching into an animated mid-morning chat, the singer is palpably pumped to be starting up the Fontaines engines once again – maybe more so than in years, as this time the band is riding on a very different vehicle. Yes, Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell’s alternately chime-y and crunchy guitars are still there; bassist Conor Deegan III and drummer Tom Coll have lost none of their drive; and Chatten is still there with his supple voice, wordplay and can’t-look-away presence.
But everything about Romance feels breathlessly bolder, eclectic and carpe diem, caution to the wind and all that. They’ve changed producers (James Ford, in place of Dan Carey), labels (XL Recordings, rather than longtime home Partisan), and aesthetics, with a series of arresting music videos underscoring the new era.
“There’s an element that feels maybe a little like playing a character,” Chatten concedes. “But with this record and everything around it, we’re drawing a lot from the inspirations we had when we were really young. For me, it was always very theatrical bands like The Cure. It was a very complex and very rich world. Almost Tim Burton-esque. And I think that drawing from that is something that feels genuine, but it also has the fun that comes with playing a role.”
Shaking things up, no matter the risk, felt like an imperative in 2023 to Fontaines D.C. While the band had made leftward moves over three albums — from the spitfire of their 2019 debut Dogrel through a dreamier A Hero’s Death in 2020 and toward something more internal on 2022’s Skinty Fia — there’s nothing gradual about the creative leap taken on Romance. “We always think that we’re pushing the boat out, or taking some new turn, with each record,” Chatten explains. “And I think probably the reality is that it was a lot less of a turn than we thought. But this time, I feel good about it being a full f–kin’ turn.”
Surely the most significant change on Romance was bringing on James Ford as producer. Post-punk A-lister Dan Carey had become synonymous with Fontaines over the band’s first three LP’s; he helmed Chatten’s debut solo LP, 2023’s warts-and-all thriller Chaos For the Fly; and Chatten admits Carey was disappointed by news of the split. But the band had been suggested Ford as a collaborator several times, and after a studio session intended to record only one song ended up yielding two and a half, the die was cast. “It just worked really well,” Chatten says. “It was just such a fluid and easy process that it just made sense.”
Ford’s production resume includes nearly 50 albums in 20 years by the likes of Foals, Klaxons, Blur, Gorillaz and Depeche Mode. But he is most indelibly associated with Arctic Monkeys, and Ford’s facility with bands “expanding” their sound is evidenced on the Monkeys’ recent LPs. Soon after coming off the road opening for Arctic Monkeys last fall, Fontaines D.C. went into the studio with Ford, and there are places on Romance that are signatures of the producer, including the string-filled drama of centerpiece “In The Modern World.”
As it happens, Monkeys frontman Turner was one of the boldfaced names in attendance when, two nights after my interview with Chatten, Fontaines D.C. played to a packed-out Warsaw Ballroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, delivering a set that included a handful of Romance tracks. Watching Chatten command a stage with more confidence than ever – certainly more than in Fontaines’ early days – it reminded me of the way that Turner, too, was initially an onstage introvert and very much grew into (or adopted) a rakish onstage swagger over the years. Chatten doesn’t dispute the comparison.
“In my experience, it can be frustrating to be reading yourself saying the same answers over and over again in interviews in that reserved way,” he offers. “And I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot over the past couple of years where it got to be a habit. I just got bored with what I was saying. So, you know, to allow a little bit of a character in, maybe, to change the way you present yourself, it makes it more interesting for yourself. So I totally relate to him leaning into that. And in terms of the singing thing, I think I just like my voice more now than I used to. I think I was probably quite uncomfortable with it, but I like it more now.”
Chatten uses that voice in more varied ways than ever on Romance – bright and melodic, droll and sardonic, dreamy and reflective, desperate and urgent. It’s all in service of a record that does have a specific thesis, expressed in the last line of the title track: “Maybe romance is a place for me, and you.” The tracks “Desire” and “In The Modern World” first gave Chatten the idea for the album title; a touchstone that inspired the latter song was the 1988 cyberpunk anime classic Akira.
“I think I really wanted to write a song that felt like the romance that blossoms in that film,” he explains. “That dystopian, everything crashing around you, and drifting further and further away apparently from a sense of humanity. But still therein blossoms a relationship, a romance. A romance that is necessary to cling onto something, and not give up hope in a world like that. I really related to that. Especially these days, you know?”
He’s quick to add, though, that it’s a form of denial as well. “I’ve always been interested in the argument, or the perspective, of seeing delusion and romance as one and the same,” he says. “And I think the place of romance that I spoke about, in the title track, it’s that place, it’s that refuge. And I think there’s a denial, maybe, involved. You’re dressing your life up in this romantic way. And I think there’s a line to blur between madness and this denial, which is necessary in order to get on. The world is absolutely f–ked, and it’s difficult to know which way to turn.”
Though Chatten tends not to write too on-the-nose about his own life experiences, they are woven throughout the new LP. The sweeping “In The Modern World,” which was written during a sabbatical to Los Angeles, opens with the line “I feel alive” then alternates calling it “the city that you like” and “the city you despise.” The first word that comes to my mind about the song, and the whole album, is “cinematic,” though I tell Chatten I hate to be reductive. “That’s okay!” he assures me with a laugh. “It is! You can reduce the record!” “I find it interesting,” he adds of the City of Angels. “And that’s as close as I get to saying I really like a place: I find it interesting and it intrigues me and stimulates me creatively. Which L.A. can do, at least in short bursts. I think I wrote that maybe with something like the ghost of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, or maybe Lana Del Rey’s voice was ringing around in my head as well. I don’t know, but maybe it’s a song to Lana Del Rey?” He chuckles. “I don’t know.”
In marked contrast to that song’s grandeur is “Horseness Is the Whatness,” a sweet late album gem with a fractured lump-in-the-throat innocence, which asks plaintively, “Will someone / Find out what the word is / That makes the world go round / ‘Cause I thought it was love.” The track’s childlike quality is no accident, Chatten says, explaining that it was written by Fontaines guitarist Carlos O’Connell, an occasional guest lyricist.
“I think that’s the second time someone’s said that to me!” Chatten says when I express affection for the song. “It’s Carlos’ line, and I’m really glad his lyrics are getting that kind of attention, ‘cause I think they’re incredible. And it’s a really vulnerable song in that way, which I think partly comes from him having a child and seeing the world through their eyes.”
Chatten has no kids of his own, but he is nearly six years into a relationship, and says of his girlfriend, who manages bands and sang on Chatten’s solo LP, “We’re good,” though by his own admission he can be “a lot” to deal with. The singer has spoken candidly in the past about serious struggles with anxiety that intensified in 2022 as Fontaines D.C. toured Skinty Fia. That album’s harrowing “Nabokov” remains emotionally challenging to perform live, while “Starburster,” the first single from Romance, was inspired by a devastating panic attack that the singer experienced in London’s St. Pancras Station during a period when such episodes were frequent.
“I was having like three, four a day around that time,” he recalls. “It got really out of hand for a while. And I got a handle on it when I got my ADHD diagnosis. Things gradually became a bit easier. And the upshot, I think, is that I’ve become a better friend and a better partner to my missus, and a better son to my folks. And if I have 10 minutes now between trains, I’ll give someone a ring and ask them how they are. Because – I’ve always wanted to know, but I’ve always had my head up my ass, do you know what I mean? So that’s the real benefit for me. Now being in a better place, I get to extend my concern to other people.”
Still, being in a long-term relationship seems to have surprised even him. Two tracks on Romance, “Bug” and “Death Kink,” seem to refer to what a challenging partner he can be. The latter tune opens with “When you came into my life I was lost / And you took that shine to me at what a cost.” “I can be a bit of a freight train, in a way that I can be unchangeable,” he admits. “I’m very rigid in what I like and what I don’t like. And I think that song ‘Bug’ is somebody who doesn’t yield, or is just leaving a trail of destruction, and that is how I feel sometimes. But we’ve been together five and a half years, and we’re incredible happy. We’re in a really good place. But I am inclined to be independent, just generally speaking, but it just so happens that I fell in love. So it’s difficult for me to divert from the path.”
Chatten is remarkably open-hearted throughout our chat. He’s a touch acerbic and is not above some good-natured teasing of a journalist he’s just met. But for the most part, he’s warm, thoughtful and seemingly principled. “I’m a sensitive little soul,” he says by way of explaining why he can’t marinate in the awful news that the world dishes out daily. In other words, to me at least, he’s quintessentially Irish, giving something not unlike the vibes I got when I twice talked to the late great Sinéad O’Connor. We lost O’Connor in July 2023, just months before the passing of another Irish legend, Shane MacGowan. Both artists were fierce, suffer-no-fools forces of nature who lived their lives at 11, and MacGowan was one of Chatten’s longtime heroes.
“We were in the middle of recording the album when Shane died,” he recalls. “And I had to f–king take a break. I was really, deeply affected by it. Partly because he enhanced my relationship with my family! You know, he connected me to my Irishness maybe in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to do without him.” As for Sinéad, “I was a big fan,” he says. “I feel like she gave an awful lot more than what was required of her, in her life. And I really respect and admire that. It means a lot. My mom is a massive Sinéad O’Connor fan, and many is the time that she had a few glasses of wine, and she would try and sing one of her tunes. In a quiet room of largely polite people!”
Romance feels destined to propel Fontaines D.C. to yet another level of attention and acclaim: the band’s fall North American tour will play mostly 1500-3000 capacity rooms, followed by European dates that includes arenas. More significantly, it’s an explosion of lush, bold new colors. Hopefully the Fontaines day ones, rowdy as some may be, will be open to the expansion. If some still long for the ragged punk of early favorites like “Liberty Belle” or “Boys In the Better Land,” those songs are out there. “I mean, if somebody wants to listen to ‘Boys In the Better Land’ for the rest of their life,” Chatten says with a shrug. “Then I envy their ability to find something that interests them for so long!”
Whatever comes next, he doesn’t plan on making the same music at 50 that he made when he was half that age. “I wouldn’t be comfortable doing it, and I probably wouldn’t be that interested in listening to it,” he flatly states. “I accessed that part of myself very thoroughly around the time that we wrote it, so I don’t know if I will be hungry to access that kind of thing, in the same way, ever again. But who knows? I am skeptical about the idea of going into grandiosity and wider themes and deeper into yourself, and then snapping back into social commentary that’s like a snappy 4-4 punk beat. I’m not sure it’s an artist’s right to do that after going so deep. So I think, stay basic for as long as you can, and then maybe get more complicated.”
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