Dean: On their new album, “Romance”, Fontaines D.C. bask in nostalgia

There seemed to be a message screaming from the promotional pictures released ahead of Fontaines D.C.’s new album, Romance. A band more typically spotted in woolly jumpers, plaid shirts, and flat caps were now styled with bright hair dye, gaudy sunglasses, and luminous jackets. They resembled a 1990s American skate punk band who had a couple of hit singles and landed an afternoon set at the doomed Woodstock ’99 festival. What a stylistic switcheroo this was. It didn’t take a cryptologist to figure out that change to their sound was also afoot.

The necessity to evolve hung over Fontaines D.C.’s excellent last album, Skinty Fia. Being Ireland’s most successful rock export of recent years had made them susceptible to parody, with Grian Chatten’s gruffly serious barstool brogue – crucial to the band’s personality – an easy target. Their move was to expand beyond the jittery post-punk formula by adding more scope and complexity to the music and writing, but without abandoning what made them so singular.

Romance – the band’s fourth LP in just five years, and first for the label XL – is a more violent lurch towards evolution. Now working with James Ford, the former Simian Mobile Disco button-pusher behind recent records by Arctic Monkeys and Blur, Fontaines D.C. tinker with three-decade-old alternative rock, grunge, pop-punk and neo-psychedelia. Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley’s guitars roar; Tom Coll’s drums have extra snap. If their early work rumbled like a Guinness truck on uneven cobblestones, Romance feels constructed from concrete and iron. It’s bound to be the favourite Fontaines album of those who were never quite sold on the band’s schtick.

Everyone will have their own list of throwback artists that they hear in these songs. For sure, the fuzzy riffs of power-pop single “Here’s The Thing” are so reminiscent of Weezer, the track could qualify as a tribute to the Los Angeles alt-rock greats. The more tension-racked “Starbuster” – man, even that title rings of the 1990s – evokes a glorious era of UK electronic-rock meshing (Primal Scream, the solo work of Ian Brown, “Fuckin’ in the Bushes”) by fusing a dusty lead guitar, programmed orchestra, and drums loud enough to break levies. Like an accordion, the digital strings appear to compress and expand, adding a gripping sense of tension.

The retro touching points don’t stop. The chipped guitar chords that usher in “Death Kink” are reminiscent of Nevermind, and Nirvana’s successful quiet-verse-loud-chorus structure is tastefully adhered to. And in the centre of the record is “Bug”, which drifts on acoustic chords like Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”. The genre-hopping feels adventurous; Romance sacrifices none of Fontaines’ power or potency for working in more external influences.

It helps that Chatten remains one of the most gripping, pugnacious, all-around relentless frontmen in the world. Here, his pop sensibilities are stronger than ever, facilitated by his voice being more malleable song to song.

In contrast to the pleasing hooks, Chatten’s writing feels increasingly cynical and despondent. The title Romance could almost be read as ironic. The title track, sung in a desperate yearn, envisions a relationship as a shadowy hellhole where two people are trapped. On “Here’s the Thing”, he finds comfort only in the mutual sharing of suffering: “I feel your pain, it’s mine as well/ I know you’re right, I know you’re right, girl.”

The best song on Romance is “In The Modern World”. Press notes compare it to Lana Del Rey and her influence is obvious in the dramatic strings, breathy backing vocals and smoggy atmosphere. It’s also one of Chatten’s most impressive performances, arousing a melody that at once feels as comfortable as old knitwear while evoking a sense of loneliness. Eschewing Del Rey’s romantic Americana, he sounds washed out, forlorn, beaten down by the world. Chatten’s lyrics can sometimes eschew specificity for abstraction, so when he punctuates the chorus by calling out the mysterious figure of Charlene, it adds a sense of personal connection so palpable in the performance.

Fontaines D.C. never hid the fact they wanted success. On the very first track on their very first album, Chatten repeats, “My childhood was small/ My childhood was small/ But I’m gonna be big/ But I’m gonna be big.” Listening to Romance, I wondered if this new interest in nostalgia reflects a yearning for a better era for rock‘n’roll bands. Boys with guitars no longer set the cultural zeitgeist; perhaps there is a limit to Fontaines D.C.’s cultural presence. If nothing else, though, the album is a triumph in expanding their sonic potential.