Piccadilly Records to host free listening party for Fontaines D.C.’s new album

Piccadilly Records, Manchester’s totemic award-winning indie record store in the heart of the Northern Quarter, is set to host an exclusive listening party for Fontaines D.C.’s new album ROMANCE on Thu 15 Aug.

Taking place from 5pm, the free music event promises guests an early playback of the Dublin outfit’s latest studio work, which drops on Fri 23 Aug, as well as unmissable giveaways and a chance to preorder one of 1,200 hand-numbered, screen-printed vinyl LPs available exclusively at the listening party.

Billed as Fontaines D.C.’s most ambitious, sweeping and experimental record yet, ROMANCE broadens their creative vista with an intoxicating marriage of grunge breaks, dystopian electronica, hip-hop percussion and woozy Slowdive textures, bringing flashes of their earlier shoegaze interpolations to the fore in a roiling, vibrant embrace of idealism in the face of oblivion.

Of the album’s title, Conor Deegan says, “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 (Mercury Prize-nominated debut) Dogrel. The second album (the GRAMMY-nominated 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.”

Expounding on the theme, Chatten refers to Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s anime Akira, where love persists against a backdrop of technological decay and unfettered political corruption. “I’m fascinated by that – falling in love at the end of the world,” he says. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes,” while O’Connell adds, “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.”

While entry to the ROMANCE listening party is free, Piccadilly Records advises guests to get down early to secure a spot.

Preorder the album HERE.