Fontaines D.C.’s second-ever single was 2017’s “Hurricane Laughter.” It’s one big swell of charged, chugging rhythm, with a siren-like guitar line and Grian Chatten acting as the band’s doomsday preacher. “And there is no connection available,” Chatten warned repeatedly as the song ballooned into hysterical chaos. Good luck finding the eye in that hurricane; Fontaines D.C. took whatever sweetness lingered in their sound and rendered it maniacal.
Nine years later, Fontaines D.C. remain excellent at giving you a poisoned candy apple, of luring you in before surrounding you in darkness. It’s the same nightmare-reprieve-nightmare cycle that powered 2024’s “Starburster,” one of the Irish group’s biggest and best songs to-date; at one moment, Chatten provides a lullaby, and at the next, he’s literally grasping for air. On Dopamine Chamber, the band’s fifth album, Fontaines D.C. sustain this cycle by stretching it across a whole record, using a Depeche Mode-esque New Wave palette to paint a portrait of 2020s dystopia. It’s a bold follow-up to their seismic fourth album, Romance, even though the poison often arrives before the candy.
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Lead single “Marianne” is the proof of concept. Over carnivalesque synths and weeping strings, Chatten continuously returns to one hypnotic root note in the chorus as he promises to “help you disappear.” It’s an invitation first and a threat second: the “cinematic feeling” is gorgeous right up until the line about going “under the knife,” and by then the hook has already set. The throbbing synth bass beneath is the primal, heavy undercurrent, but it’s easy to lose track of it as you’re swallowed up by the romantic strings and Chatten’s seductive allure.
“Marianne” is terrific, as is “Happy for You,” a charged breakup song that features a similarly clever trick. A moody guitar tone and Tom Coll’s metronomic groove hold a smile in place while Chatten swears he won’t run after you, but the verses admit that on leaving, he “key[s] your car” and “stole your pearls.” When the band finally erupts into a rock freakout, the bitterness has been audible the whole time. Chatten really emphasizes this turn as he sneers the words “I sweeeeeeaaaar” in the final two choruses, and they close out the song with a strangely alarming, wholly dissonant pair of notes; whatever dopamine exists in the raw washes of guitar strums is cancelled out at a moment’s notice, and then we’re headed straight back under water again with “Demolition.”
Second single “Tongue” is the album’s most jagged offering. Frantic drums, an eerie synth backdrop, and tense raps from Chatten dominate the sonic environment until the 1:37 mark, when a piano line flies in out of nowhere. The jaunty rhythm is silly but it goes hard. By the time they careen into the final chorus, their usual orchestral swell arrives again, the stakes rise, and the band closes out the song with a brief guitar solo from hell, pitched up vocals, and really, no definable feeling of satisfaction. Similarly, opening track “Six Shot Morning” is unnerving from the first bar: pounding synths and a quick, pushing drum pattern surround Chatten’s reverb-drenched voice, and the “always” refrain lands over a bright synth line with something audibly off in it. He sings that it’s “a beautiful world,” and the music refuses to agree.
It’s a bit of an unavoidable theme when experiencing Dopamine Chamber: this one’s not gonna be too pretty. Fontaines D.C. are bigger than they’ve ever been, making it all the more fascinating that their follow-up to Romance lacks a big pop single or a to-the-rafters anthem for festivals. The closest they get is on the downright majestic “One Man,” which has plenty to savor in its slow, dreamy three-chord groove. Seven songs in, this is finally the eye of the hurricane: a stop-start drum pattern keeps it from floating off, but when the music swells, Chatten, insisting he’s “only one man,” sounds enormous.
“Japan” is another bright spot, though this time, the darkness of Chatten’s lyrics is cloaked in a warm acoustic strum, like a slowed, hazier cousin of Romance’s “Favourite.” Chatten narrates a woman in a rather dismal relationship — “When they fuck she leaves her body for a while” — but the miserable emotions depicted feel weightless as the band embrace a more beautiful, awestruck sound. Like “Marianne,” it’s a song that earns your trust before it turns on you, and it’s a trick the album could use more of.
Still, respect to Fontaines for not simplifying their sound or reducing the size of their ideas as their status has grown. Dopamine Chamber sounds like the band embracing discomfort and attempting to reinvent themselves. Chatten, who sought to “leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly” and provide a “catastrophic warning,” draws from a typically impressionistic style to convey that sense of doom and anguish.
One motif that does appear a lot on the album is film, cinema, and screens; the images keep turning life into something watched. “Six Shot Morning” has “melancholy hearts in a motion film,” “Marianne” sells a “cinematic feeling,” and the narrator of “Mimesis” is “tired of living in a photograph” and “submitting to the final frame.” It all comes to a head in the final track, “Intimate,” where “the ruins of the human dream” end up “so pretty in the final scene.” It’s the closest the album comes to a concrete argument: whether through a screen or a lens, we’re living as an audience, with the poison and the pleasure both on display.
These ideas are potent, though the songs that house them aren’t all as rousing or affecting as, say, “Marianne” and “Japan”; “Where Is Gone?,” a collaboration with Rosalía, is shockingly the driest of the bunch. But for the most part, Dopamine Chamber is a bold, bruising listen. Nine years on from “Hurricane Laughter,” the storm is bigger and better built, but the brief calm in the middle is what lingers.
Ed. Note: Fontaines D.C. will embark on their biggest North American tour yet next year. Get tickets to see them here.