Romance by Fontaines D.C.

Romance, the fourth studio album from Irish post-punks Fontaines D.C., landed on 23 August 2024, and it's the sound of a band cheerfully tearing up its own blueprint. It's their first record for XL Recordings after leaving Partisan Records, with James Ford in the producer's chair, helping Grian Chatten and guitarists Conor Curley and Carlos O'Connell swap some of the grey-sky grit for something stranger and more widescreen.

The singles tell the story, from the jittery lurch of "Starburster" to "Favourite", "Here's the Thing" and "In the Modern World". Critics loved it, and British fans followed: it sold more than double the opening-week haul of the chart-topping Skinty Fia and debuted at number two in the UK, kept off the summit only by Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet. Two Grammy nominations came next, for Best Rock Album and for "Starburster" in Best Alternative Music Performance.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.