Devotion runs through the veins of Fontaines D.C.’s music. The Dublin group first crashed onto the post-punk scene with their 2019 debut Dogrel, a nuanced, gripping homage to their homeland; 2022’s guttural Skinty Fia unpacked the guilt they felt after relocating to London. Now, they’re considering devotion through an entirely new lens, introduced on the opening title track of their fourth album Romance. Over brooding, cinematic synths, singer Grian Chatten proclaims, “Maybe romance is a place/For me/And you.”
If there was any takeaway from the 4-single run ahead of songs the band put out before Romance’s release, it’s that Fontaines aren’t to be pigeonholed. From the grungy Nineties rap-rock flow of “Starburster” (one of the best tracks of the year) to the jangly dream-pop charmer “Favourite,” the band quickly melted away any genre confines that might have been previously placed around them. The shift was exciting, it was unpredictable, it was even lightly nerve wracking. But Romance delivers: the record is wildly expansive, and Fontaines’ bullheaded integrity still stands, perhaps with a stronger spine than ever.
The subversion extends beyond the music: a significant talking point surrounding the album’s rollout has been the band’s sudden aesthetic and stylistic shift. The colors are brighter, the outfit choices more bizarre. It may seem drastic, but this is not the business of a band flailing to reinvent their own wheel; it’s a group who has stepped into a new echelon of self-assuredness. And it’s really not too random, after all; there have been foreshadowed hints that this version of Fontaines has always lived in their DNA. In a Reddit AMA the band held five years ago in support of Dogrel, frontman Chatten stated his love of an Arthur Rimbaud poem also titled ‘Romance,’ saying it “does a similar thing to me as some of [Bob] Dylan’s early lyrics.”
It takes a true romantic to be a world-builder, and Fontaines D.C. have mastered the art. Each song on Romance acts as its own fantastical cinematic universe, fleshed out with fictional characters, in-depth monologues, and pristinely-curated sonic elements to match. That’s partially indebted to the band’s decision to work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) on this record. The textures of the instruments on Romance sound crisper and more strikingly pinpointable, showcasing drummer Tom Coll, bassist Conor (Deego) Deegan III, and guitarists Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley at their most harmoniously in-sync.
On tracks like “Desire” and the plunging, Slowdive-like “Sundowner” – which features lead vocals from Curley – heartrending guitar riffs build atop a steady bed of lush strings and ooze into full shoegaze territory. “Death Kink” is a masterclass in edging and restraint, with Chatten gasping for air as a sky-high wave of fuzzy guitars suspends just long enough for him to utter, “I made a promise and I killed it/Shit, shit, shit.”
The band’s vocal performances serve as a storytelling tactic on their own. Chatten outdoes himself here, whether he’s employing his gravelly growl, floating into falsetto, or stepping back from the mic to let his words echo and fall in the negative space. A major strength of Romance are the background vocals sung by Deego and O’Connell – they double as parentheticals, or secondary narrations, telling tiny stories all their own. Take the push-and-pull conversation that occurs on the cascading, Lana Del Rey-esque “In The Modern World,” an orchestral examination of numbness and escapism: “I don’t feel anything, and I don’t feel bad.”
At moments on the record, particularly the string-laden ones, it feels like Fontaines D.C. could be teetering on the precipice of disillusionment. They’re well-aware of the crumbling dystopian world around them, with themes of apocalyptic existentialism and a real Hail Mary “love at the end of the world” sensibility running through the album. And yet, they maintain that romance – as idealistic and whimsical as the concept might be – is the crux, a delusion worth surrendering to.
The album’s heartbeat lies in “Horseness Is The Whatness,” which takes its name from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Singing lyrics written by O’Connell, Chatten dizzily asks for someone to find out what the word is that makes the world go ‘round. “‘Cause I thought it was love,” he implores, with an almost childlike defiance, and you can tell he wants to believe it. “But some say that it has to be choice.”
The tension between love and choice brings to mind a song on the band’s 2020 album A Hero’s Death. The title is the message, and it’s repeated on a loop throughout the track: “Love Is The Main Thing.” Romance finds Fontaines D.C. running through a thick smog of anxiety and doom, sending up a slew of questions about what the point of it all even is. It seems like they’ve known the answer all along.
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.