Fontaines DC have announced an impromptu intimate performance in London to mark the UK release of their new album Romance. With just two days’ notice, the Dublin post-punk outfit set fans racing to grab tickets for the gig at Camden’s Electric Ballroom this Thursday (August 22).
The show promises an exciting preview on the eve of the album’s official UK release the following day. About the imminent release of Romance, lead singer Grian Chatten recently told Rolling Stone: “The infrastructure, visually and sonically, feels a bit more robust, but we’re always going to have a ramshackle element. Whether we’re playing big arenas or not, there’s always going to be a sense of anarchy in what we do and the way we perform. We’re still just walking on a tight rope.”
After rocketing to local fame playing Dublin venues, the band caught mass attention with their debut album Dogrel, which dropped in April 2019 to critical acclaim, earning a Mercury Prize nomination and solidifying their place in the post-punk revival scene. The follow-up, A Hero’s Death, released in July 2020, further cemented their status, garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album. Their third album, Skinty Fia, released in 2022, achieved number one on both the Irish and UK Albums Charts.
The band has released all the album’s singles individually, most recently sharing “In the Modern World” with fans, a pensive orchestral track channelling more accessible guitar-pop influences as opposed to the post-punk flavour of the group’s early work. Critics quickly noted the song as emblematic of the band’s evolving sound and emotional pitch.
“It’s a nihilistic take on modern living, on how capitalism and consumption suck out all feeling — even the bad ones. The new single was penned in Los Angeles and borrows from the stylings of Lana Del Rey, two influences that couldn’t seem much further from the places and people that first influenced Fontaines on Dogrel,” wrote Elle Palmer of Far Out Magazine about “In the Modern World”.
“It makes sense, then, that ‘In the Modern World’ acts as a distillation of their changing sound and perfectly sets us up for the release of Romance,” Palmer added.
In a similar step-change, “Favourite” channels softer 2000s indie flavours, while “Starburster” shares the same theatrical orchestral ambition as “In the Modern World,” combined with punchy, empty-room percussion and wrapped vocals.
Regarding the band’s directional shift on Romance, the Guardian wrote that “Romance is more straightforwardly approachable than any Fontaines DC album to date […] but it doesn’t sacrifice any of the band’s potency in the process: thrillingly, it still carries the same grimy, careworn, aggressive qualities as their previous work.”
The popularity of tickets for the Electric Ballroom gig, despite the abrupt nature of the show’s announcement, is testament to the wave of popularity that Fontaines are riding, and this fan loyalty has proven persistent through previous stylistic course-shifts the band have offered in recent years. Now, though, with perhaps their most dramatic tonal redirection, the fast selling tickets for tomorrow’s performance is a sign that clamour for Fontaines is as strong as ever. Some remaining tickets for the intimate launch gig at Electric Ballroom can be found here.
