Ireland’s Fontaines D.C. Want to Romance You With Their Fourth Studio Album

Of all the songs on their new record, Chatten’s favorite (not to be confused with the closing track called “Favourite”) is, without a doubt, “In the Modern World.” “I always wanted to write that song but never knew how,” Chatten explains. “I remember the moment that song came to a point; I arranged the strings and stuff on my laptop at home in my flat. After I listened to it and closed the laptop, I was like, Ah, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for five years. I always wanted to write a song that sounded like Lana Del Rey could maybe sing on it, you know?”

Compared to the poetic, charismatic Chatten, the fuschia-headed O’Connell is more mellow and mysterious. “On that tour [with Arctic Monkeys], because it was a support tour, we had much more time to ourselves,” he explains, carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. “We rarely get to be in the same room for a long time, where we all have nothing to do. So, we essentially started short with the instrumentation, which defined where this album went. We had a couple of acoustic guitars and our voices.”

For a group of 20-something guys, their creative process is remarkably analogue: among their most critical producing tools is a big whiteboard. “We take it out from storage, wipe everything from the last album off it, and just start pouring every idea down,” O’Connell says. At one point, they had about 35 songs in consideration, ranging from 22-second phone recordings to finished melodies.

“You don’t really know what the album, at that point, will become. We could have made totally different albums outta that,” he notes. One that didn’t make the cut “had this real ’80s vibe to it, with this offbeat clap. It felt a little bit like Dua Lipa or something,” he adds, singing a bit of the intro to “Levitating” for emphasis. (O’Connell, it should be noted, is a girl dad, though his 18-month-old daughter, Vega, is still a bit young for Future Nostalgia.) “Starburster,” the explosive first single inspired by a panic attack Chatten had in St. Pancras station, and the cinematic and melancholic title track, “Romance,” eventually helped to set the tone for the rest of the album.