Fontaines D.C. made a raucous return to Later…with Jools Holland this weekend, playing new singles ‘Starburster’ and ‘Favourite’ – watch the footage below.
READ MORE: Fontaines D.C.’s daring comeback single ‘Starburster’ is their most experimental work yet
With the Irish band gearing up to release their fourth studio album ‘Romance’ on August 23 via XL Recordings, they took the chance to make their presence felt on the BBC music show on Saturday (June 22).
First, they opened the show with a feverish performance of ‘Starburster’, the album’s first single, released in April and described by NME as “a pensive art-rock beast that fuses elements of electronica and hip-hop more akin to their fellow striking countrymen (and recent collaborators) KNEECAP”.
See ‘Starburster’ here:
Later in the show, they played the plaintive ‘Favourite’, which Chatten has described as having “this never-ending sound to it, a continuous cycle from euphoria to sadness, two worlds spinning forever”.
See ‘Favourite’ here:
A third new Fontaines song has also been finding its way into the band’s recent European festival setlists, in the form of the album title track ‘Romance’.
For UK fans eager to catch the new material, the band have announced a run of three intimate album launch shows to take place in August – in Kingston’s Pryzm on the 27th, Liverpool’s Content on the 28th and Newcastle’s Boiler Shop on the 29th. Find any remaining tickets here.
They are also due to embark on both a UK/IE headline tour and a joint European tour with Wunderhorse – see all dates here and get your tickets here.
They will also be headlining the Park Stage at Glastonbury on June 28 and will return to Reading & Leeds’ main stage on the week of the album’s release in August.
‘Romance’ has been produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Depeche Mode). Speaking about the title of the album, bassist Conor Deegan III said: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as ‘Dogrel‘. The second album (‘A Hero’s Death‘) is about that detachment, and the third (‘Skinty Fia‘) is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”
He added: “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy – the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”
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