On ROMANCE, the fourth and most ambitious LP by Dublin-bred quintet Fontaines D.C., the band dedicates itself to building immersive sonic worlds with each song. Fontaines D.C. have always explored the theme of belonging, but with each album, they orbit further and further away from inspecting it through the perspective of their Irish identity. Not only did most of the members move to London years ago, but between ROMANCE and 2022’s Skinty Fia, they also spent personal time abroad elsewhere, Carlos O’Connell in Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, Grian Chatten in Los Angeles, and Conor Deegan in Paris. As the members’ individual experiential horizons expanded, so too did their creative boundaries. Bringing them all back together, ROMANCE draws inspiration from unexpected sources including hip hop, nü-metal, heavy metal, and Akira, along with the band’s more usual literary ones like James Joyce.

Like the concept of romance itself, the album is vast. It hits extremes, from tender to tumultuous and fantasy to clear-eyed reality. After all, we can romanticize people, places, objects, and periods in our lives so much that they feel more real than the real world. And as that real world collapses around us, we need to protect the things we romanticize at all costs. It’s this urgency that threads through ROMANCE’s 11 tracks. From the brooding title track that opens the album, you can feel an impending tailspin coming. This sensation ramps up on the next track “Starburster” which finds singer Chatten basically rapping over a grand drumbeat that thumps away with hop hop bombast backed by dramatic strings and sparse piano notes. And if “Starburster” feels like it teeters on the precipice of disaster, it’s largely because it was inspired by a panic attack Chatten once experienced in a London train station.

The waking nightmare quality of ROMANCE continues on “Sundowner,” which features guitarist Conor Curley leading vocals for the first time, and not just because he repeatedly incants “in my dreams”; rather, it’s the way his words linger in the mist of shoegaze textures. The acoustic guitar and tambourine-based “In the Modern World” also exudes an end-of-the-world melancholy, its drama stirred by sustained strings and vocal harmonies that recall Smashing Pumpkins’ chiming “Disarm.” Acoustic guitar on songs like this and “Horseness Is the Whatness,” which derives its title from James Joyce’s Ulysses, does wonders to soften the edges of the album’s crueller emotions. But ROMANCE’s softest moment is closer “Favourite,” which ends ROMANCE on a shining note. A sunbeam on an otherwise stormy album, “Favourite” pays tribute to the relationships the band members hold dear, of those who’ve passed on and those who are still with them today.

And speaking of delicate performances, Chatten hits some of his highest notes to date on “Romance” and “Here’s the Thing.” And over ghostly ambience, his falsetto on “Desire” calls to mind Thom Yorke. These are among his most impressive showings as a vocalist, at the very least in his willingness to attempt these feats of exertion. That said, ROMANCE highlights also include “Here’s the Thing,” which stands out for its nü-metal chug, and “Death Kink” is unique as the album’s most direct rock song and for Chatten’s unaccompanied moment of spoken word vocals.

In interviews, Chatten often likens ROMANCE to a snow globe: a pretty, scenic world that can get shaken into chaos in a matter of seconds. If Fontaines D.C. had not succeeded in creating such a world where listeners get a sense of both that serenity and chaos, ROMANCE would still be a success for the band’s daringness to reject the familiar in favour of challenging themselves and fans’ expectations.

Pre-order ROMANCE by Fontaines D.C. HERE