»Romance«, which will be released in August 2024 via XL Recordings, is the band's first album with producer James Ford and is without doubt their most ambitious, imaginative and sonically adventurous album to date. It follows on from the success of 2022's album »Skinty Fia«, which reached #1 on the album charts in the UK and Ireland and earned the band a number of awards, including »International Group of the Year« at the 2023 BRIT Awards. The explosive lead single »Starburster« heralds the latest creative (r)evolution of Fontaine's D.C. Inspired by a panic attack that lead singer Grian Chatten suffered at London's St. Pancras station, the song is repeatedly interrupted by sharp and wild inhalation. The driving beat and relentless lyrics depict self-destruction as a fantasy, before there is a brief moment of sobering clarity as the drums stop and chatting transitions from spitting, almost rapping vocals to a psalm whose baritone is full and dreamy. The song is accompanied by a cinematic music video by director Aube Perrie (Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, The Hives), which brilliantly captures the cathartic intensity of the song. The 11 tracks of the new album bundle ideas that Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O'Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass) and Tom Coll (drums) have developed since the release of ‹Skinty Fia‹ in 2022 while touring the USA and Mexico with the Arctic Monkeys. The five band members shared their music and found a connection with artists who deftly build their own expansive creative worlds: the attitude and aesthetic polish of artists like Shygirl and Sega Bodega, the bold sonic palettes of hip-hop and heavy metal, Mos Def, A$AP Ferg, OutKast, and Korn. They had time for themselves to develop their own visions for the music of the future: O'Connell went to the Spanish region of Castile-La Mancha and later became a father, while Chatten spent time in LA and Deegan in Paris. They put down deeper roots in London. Each member spent time exploring their personal boundaries - experimental riffs, chord progressions, and far-fetched lyrical allusions with no intention of ultimately making a record. After the conclusion of the US Arena tour in the fall of 2023, they spent a month writing together again, three weeks of pre-production in a studio in north London, and a month in a castle near Paris, where they slept amidst the studio equipment and completely immersed in their music. Conor Deegan says about the title of the album: "We've always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album moves further away from looking at these things through the lens of Ireland, as directly as the (Mercury Prize-nominated) debut Dogrel. The second album (the GRAMMY-nominated A Hero's Death) is about this distancing, and the third (Skinty Fia) is about Irishness, which has been shifted in the diaspora. Now we'll see where and what else there is to be romantic." In explaining the topic, Chatting is reminiscent of the anime ‹Akira‹ by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, in which love develops around the characters despite a maelstrom of technical decay and political corruption. "That's what fascinates me - to fall in love at the end of the world," he says. "The album is about protecting this little flame. The bigger Armageddon gets, the more valuable it becomes," and O'Connell adds: "This record is about deciding what fantasy is - the tangible world or the world in which you move in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual to us."