Romance

Fantastic and diverse album by Fontaines D.C. After the 2023 solo album of lead singer, the band also leaves the path of straight post-punk. The music is more approachable and polished. All kinds of rock styles, slow songs and electronics and it all fits. An instant classic!

Knew the band a little bit, but never rook time to listen to many songs. This album is an absolute banger!

This was not like I expected from Ireland, and I loved it.

Great album from start to finish

Rating: 10/10

The Fontaines have been one of my favorite modern rock bands. On Romance they managed to come out with their most enjoyable and mainstream album. This one they tone down some of their Irish tones and ramp up the rock melodies. Overall I think this is a great album even with how recent it was released. I’ve listened to it many times over and this band is one of Irelands best. 8.2/10

Even tho fontaines has an online reputation of “bruv music” because of favorite going viral on tik tok, i was surprised by how varied this album is. It wasn’t just their normal Irish stuff but heavier and more melodic rock and electronic sounding.

I really liked the other album by this group that was added to the list. Not sure I liked this one quite as much but it was still very good. Will listen again. 4 stars.

Really surprised by this group when they "burst" into the US in 2024. Really dug this. Cool stuff.

Romance got a lot of traction in indie music circles last year, so much traction that it found itself on several best-of year-end lists for 2024. And with good reason! Fontaines D.C. shifts away from their usual post-punk sound to channel a more melodic indie rock approach. The result is a lovely expression of complex emotions that's rich in tonal width. With rarely a drop in quality, Romance has proven itself to be a standout rock album for the 21st century. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: I have a rule that there should be a 5-year wait period before albums are considered for the list, so get back to me in 2030.

I'll admit Fontaines D.C. never really made it onto my regular rotation, though I’ve always liked the singles. I've listened to all albums since Dogrel, but hadn't heard this one yet. So I went into Romance curious—would it bring that same post-punk punch? Yes and no. The spiky post-punk sound is mostly gone (only “Here’s the Thing” and “Death Kink” echo that older style), replaced by a broader sonic palette: Britpop, shoegaze, '90s alt-rock, indie, even hints of orchestral pop. And yet, it still sounds like Fontaines D.C., largely thanks to Grian Chatten’s unmistakable vocals. Honestly, I think this shift works in their favour—great bands grow beyond the genres they started in. There are real highlights here: “Starbuster,” “In the Modern World,” and the jangly, Smiths-like “Favourite” are standouts—each one distinct and memorable. But I don’t hear the masterpiece that some others seem to. Tracks like “Desire,” “Horseness Is the Whatness,” and “Motorcycle Boy” just don’t stick, and others like “Sundowner” or “Bug” are decent but not revelatory. Still, Romance feels stronger than their last two albums, and maybe even on par with Dogrel. It’s a confident reinvention that might explain why Fontaines D.C. have become the post-punk flag-bearers of their era.

From what I remember of this before falling into a very deep and satisfying sleep, it was alright. When I woke up, the algorithm had shifted me over to someone called Nilüfer Yana, and I really enjoyed what I heard of her, so thanks for something that had the algo make me happy!

I didn’t vibe with this on the first listen last year but I think that’s because I had it on while training for a 10k and I just hate running. Revisiting it without being distracted by exercise a few months ago, I appreciated it a lot more. A slick and melodic post-punk album that marks a new chapter for Fontaines after their rowdy debut and the Irish-folk-punk of Skinty Fia (which is still probably my favourite of theirs). Romance returns to the dreamier sound that peppered Fontaines’ second album A Hero’s Death but sticks the landing a bit better here, and welcomes in some new sounds like the rap-inspired swagger of Starburster. Here’s the Thing is basically shoegaze, and the melancholic yet bright outro of Favourite really sticks with me after each listen. Maybe a bit soon to be on a best of all time list, but it’s one of the standout records from last year for sure

Ok really? Two Fontaines albums in almost a week and this one came out last year?

Excellent newish Irish band.

*Romance* is Fontaines D.C. throwing their boots at the stars and finding a strange kind of gravity up there. The Dublin quintet may have aimed for far more mainstream tones and intents with this fourth album, they still sound well-entrenched in the post-punk fringes -- like mercenary "cleaners" who may have more than one definition for the phrase "sanctioning a hit". Take the title track, for example. It doesn’t just open the album — it stalks it into existence, cloaked in dread and thick with theatrical menace, like Krzysztof Komeda scoring a lost Kubrick hallway scene. There’s a horror-film ambiance slithering through the song's ominous toy piano and haunted vocals, setting a tone of strange intimacy and cold sweat. “Starbuster” then snaps that spell without breaking it — with a syncopated pulse, an anxious vintage mellotron, and an elastic groove that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Primal Scream comedown. It’s Fontaines flirting with dancefloor tension and hip hop influences, but refusing to give in fully. Grian Chatten -- here inspired by a panic attack he once experienced in a busy train station -- sounds less like a streetcorner oracle this time around, and more like a rogue broadcaster from a pirate signal. At a breathless pace, he darts into a smog that suddenly turns into a mystical fog on the song's bridge, crooning, snarling and seducing you from there. A touch of genius from the Irish frontman: those gasping fits that punctuate each iteration of the hook — raw, urgent, impossible to ignore. It's a trick sharp enough to slice the daze of passers-by and stop them on their track in their morning commute. Will they catch their train after *that*? By the time the third cut kicks in, the picture is clearer — the band has reshaped its palette without abandoning its bite. “Here’s The Thing” is a bouncy, defiant rocker that could’ve spilled out of a 1996 Top of the Pops green room. There’s more than a whiff of the Manic Street Preachers in its guitar glory and lyrical existentialism, even if Grian Chatten’s delivery is less James Dean Bradfield sermon and more drunken swagger from a pub prophet with lipstick on his collar. A bit later, once "Desire"'s arena-rock ribbons of longing have finished circling back on themselves, “In The Modern World” dials down the urgency to a sighing haze of romantic strings that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Lana Del Rey record — all noir and wide-eyed, like an abandoned fairground in New York. The cut is Fontaines at their most cinematic, as if they had just discovered Lee Hazlewood, an obscure seventies art film, and a bottle of absinthe in the same afternoon. Right after, "Bug" is close to the lush tones of Echo and The Bunnymen at their folkiest — pastoral, spiraling, melancholy, without ever collapsing under the song's own weight. It opens like something ancient being remembered, a sound full of space and light leaking through leaves that sets the tone for the string of deeper cuts that follow: dreamy "Motorcycle Boy", the shoegaze diversion of ‘Sundowner,’ -- whose polished shimmer admittedly veers too close to simulation -- and intimate "Horseness Is the Whatness". Out of the blue, "Death Kink" shreds this calm, with a surge of abrasive Pixies-indebted indie-rock tones, twisted and giddy with menace. And then there’s “Favorite,” one last detour into the heart and a tune that feels like it’s writing itself while it’s being sung, with a sort of casual devastation that sneaks up on you — almost too tender to fully unpack. A glorious closer that owes as much to The Smiths as to REM. *Romance* is Fontaines D.C. stepping into a kind of accidental grandeur. They've sanded some of the jagged edges, not to fit in, but to make the cuts cleaner. It's a gorgeous pivot, haunted and humming — less a rebirth than a glitch in their own matrix, and all the better for it. ---- Additional note: I used AI (Chat GPT) to write the very first draft of this review, following a very long and specific prompt from me. Funny how even after that prompt, Chat GPT still got a lot of the musical references wrong, btw. The text was then heavily edited and completed. And so now, "here's the thing". I just want to be honest here. As much as I love *Romance*, I can also hear the criticisms stating it sounds a bit too clean and distant after the Fountaines' first three LPs. So I thought it would be fitting to use one of the new perks of our "modern world" to describe it ("I don't feel anything," goes Grian in the song using that phrase, remember?). After more than three years using this generator and leaving generally long-ass reviews in it, I might as well also use it as some sort of writing experiment to hone my humble craft. Hope you can understand the intent here, and not judge the results too harshly. 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 5. 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 4.5). Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 37 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 45 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 91 ---- Émile, ENFIN j'ai trouvé le temps de t'écrire une nouvelle réponse : voir *Chet* au-dessous

Really surprised how much i enjoyed this, particularly after distinctly not liking Dogrel. This is a bit moodier with an electronic atmospheric feel. Though starbuster is definitely catchy, Bug, Sundowner and Death Kink are my favorites.

Thank you! For choosing yet another fourth studio album. I've never actually heard of this album, but it's good. Very easy to listen to.

Best Fontaine's DC album to date, they lowered the vocals in the mix to make it more balanced

Liked this waaaaay more than Dogrel!

Recent rock that actually rocks

I did like this- as some have noted this is a mash of lots of styles but they're good ones and well melded together. Energetic and interesting- well put together. Very professional.

Way better than Dogrel. That one was mostly just pretty safe post-punk. This one is much more varied and confident in itself. I think they finally found their niche. "Starburster" is a highlight. What an earworm. Strong 4/5.

❤️

Aah, I really wanted to love this album after track 2 but there’s not much else on here that stands out to me. And realistically, track 2 just sounds like Kasabian, who, yeah, did this stuff 20 years ago. I’m still just about falling on the positive side with this, because I think I will keep listening to Starburster, but I’m a bit disappointed that the rest of the album couldn’t deliver more bangers.

Really good modern indie rock album that at times recalls classic Depeche Mode or The Cure. “In the Modern World” is a masterpiece.

For years Iv thought DC fountains were a band I should really like but just couldn’t get into them. Think it was the vocals grated on me too much. This is the album that finally clicked with me though. I think it is more accessible than their previous work.

Wasn't too hot on Dogrel when it came up earlier, but I liked this one a lot more. Holding down the fort in the modern day

Love this band but 'Skinty Fia' would've been the better choice for the list – now that this most recent effort has been out for a better part of a year, it stands starkly beneath its predecessor's shadow to me. Don't get me wrong, tracks like 'Starbuster' and 'Here's The Thing' are still on my heavy rotation and promise a continually bright future for Fontaines as they push their songwriting, this LP as a whole just feels like a jumbled bag of tracks without a stylistic or thematic thread to hold on to. Comparing this with Skinty's thrumming undercurrent of darkness that made the parts feel greater than the whole, I had high hopes for 'Romance' that I just don't think it lives up to. The album does get points, however, for having some of the most creative and exciting songwriting in the band's oeuvre to date, and still ended up relatively high on my Best of 2024 list. I'm probably being mildly harsh here given Skinty is my current pick for album of the decade, and I'm still excited to see what Grian and company have in store on the next one.

4 I mean Its alright 3

I liked this passably well, it was musically solid and lyrically interesting. The near uniform "low and slow" tone throughout needed moving around more I thought.

Never heard this band but the name is familiar, and I know they're popular with all the kids atm. They're not as awful as I've come to expect from their generation, so that's cool. I was expecting some kind of typical gen-Z gender bending, half-rock, half-electro nonsense with lyrics about mental illness or whatever. But thankfully, it was just mildly boring bog pop rock. 2020s Coldplay. 3/5.

A little dreamy, a little morose, I thought maybe the spiritual heirs of The Smiths.

Rock alternativo. Ni fu ni fa.

I enjoyed this. I will add that I'm happy to see Fontaines D.C. carrying the torch for moody modern rock into the 2020s. That said, this is just a solid 3, nothing more. Fave Songs: Favourite, Sundowner, Bug, Motorcycle Boy, Here's the Thing

Please don’t tell my friend Anthony that I think this just fine

I’ve tried to get into this band for the last few years. I enjoy the songs enough it just hasn’t grabbed me enough to end up in regular rotation.

I do like a band where you can hear the natural accent. This was interesting indie.

Really? I mean it’s not even the best Fontaines DC album

I've really tried to get into this album since it was released last year. Some of my friends gush about it a ton. It got lots of allocades but I just don't hear it. For whatever reason, it just doesn't click. They are supposed to play a 3 festivals I'm attending this summer so maybe seeing them live will help explain it but until then the music is just fine. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

A second album from this group on the user submitted list. I think I liked the other one slightly better but this was still enjoyable.

I really liked the last user suggested Fontaines D.C., which was the first I'd heard from them. This one not as much. At all. But very happy to have some brand new music on the list.

It sounds like they went the Turnstile route.

I didn't find it outstanding, I think only one track (STARBUSTER) has character and stature, the other tracks seemed average to me, or very average.

I quite liked the other Fontaine's album... But this has icky late stage Coldplay vibes I can't get with. It feels stadium as a perjorative.

Romance doesn't do much for me, it's too close to the alt/indie rock sound I don't really get on with, and the guy's voice is REALLY whiny and annoying for the most part. The opening title track is pretty interesting because it builds a wall of noise and anticipation and then doesn't really do much like that afterwards, so that was an immediate disappointment. Sundowner is closer to the mark in that regard and probably my favourite track but it's mostly just not for me, 2/5.

Enjoyable, not bad, per se, but I'm not sure this belongs on the list. Feels a bit formulaic/same-same for a "Must Hear" list.

Disappointed.

I tried this a couple times and got nowhere with it. More misses than hits lately.