Fontaines DC review, Romance: Leaves post-punk in its dust and roars off into broad new horizons

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. They’ve been gradually expanding, and decelerating, their sound ever since 2019’s frenetic debut Dogrel; by 2022’s third record Skinty Fia – their first UK No 1 – singer Grian Chatten’s dolorous Dublin poetry was washed with dark oceanic swells, accordion laments, and sparse chorales. The title track for instance, for which Chatten adopts the sweet, tormented croon he’s been developing since “No” on 2020’s A Hero’s Death, is no doe-eyed petal pluck of a song. Amid creeping Shinto menace and gruesome clangs of fuzz and feedback – a modern, likely unconscious update of Peter Gabriel’s sacrificial 1982 mood piece “Lay Your Hands on Me” – Chatten deadpans Hannibal Lecter’s idea of romantic verse. That it then gives way to a breezy, Smiths-esque indie folk closer called “Favourite”, featuring a guitar riff that could’ve fallen off Viva La Vida…, evinces the depth and richness that new producer James Ford has brought to the band on a record that leaves post-punk in its dust and roars off into broad new horizons.