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May 08, 2024 By Mark Redfern

Irish five-piece Fontaines D.C. are releasing a new album, Romance, on August 23 via XL. Last night the band were the musical guests on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the band performed the album’s first single, “Starburster.” Watch the performance below.

“Starburster” was shared via a music video and was #1 on our Songs of the Week list.

Then they announced a fall North American tour. The one-month trek runs from September 20 to October 20 and NYC band Been Stellar will be the opening act.

Romance is the band’s fourth album, the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed Skinty Fia (which was #1 on both the UK and Irish album charts), 2020’s Grammy-nominated A Hero’s Death, and 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated Dogrel. It finds them working with producer James Ford for the first time.

The band was formed in Dublin but is now based in London and features Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass), and Tom Coll (drums). Ideas for the new album started to form while they were touring the U.S. and Mexico with Arctic Monkeys. Then the band members went their separate ways for a while, before reconvening for a three weeks of pre-production in a North London studio and one month of recording in a chateau near Paris.

In a previous press release, Deegan said of the album title: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as Dogrel. The second album is about that detachment, and the third is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Chatten relates the theme of the album to Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s 1988 anime movie classic Akira, where, as the press release put it, “the embers of love develop despite a maelstrom of technological degradation and political corruption around its characters.”

“I’m fascinated by that—falling in love at the end of the world,” he said. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger Armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes.”

O’Connell added: “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy—the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

In 2023 Chatten released his debut solo album, Chaos For the Fly. Read our interview with him about it here.

Fontaines D.C. North American Tour Dates:

September 20 - Showbox SoDo - Seattle, WA
September 21 - Roseland Theater - Portland, OR
September 22 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
September 24 - The Warfield - San Francisco, CA
September 26 - Hollywood Palladium - Los Angeles, CA
September 27 - SOMA - San Diego, CA
September 28 - Fox Theater - Pomona, CA
September 30 - The Van Buren - Phoenix, AZ
October 2 - Gothic Theatre - Englewood, CO
October 4 - The Granada - Lawrence, KS
October 5 - Slowdown - Omaha, NE
October 6 - The Sylvee - Madison, WI
October 8 - The Fillmore - Minneapolis, MN
October 9 - The Salt Shed - Chicago, IL
October 11 - Queen Elizabeth Theatre - Toronto, ON
October 12 - MTELUS - Montreal, QC
October 13 - Roadrunner - Boston, MA
October 15 - Brooklyn Paramount - Brooklyn, NY
October 18 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
October 20 - The Fillmore - Philadelphia, PA

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