Fontaines DC: Dopamine Chamber review – gloomy, gorgeous and a gargantuan triumph
(XL) This is a beguiling, endlessly inventive and frequently astonishing fifth LP from a group at increasing ease with being the best band of their generation Fifteen centuries ago, the Byzantine archbishop Theophilus of Adana did first-hand business with the devil for his own superficial betterment. Today, we just blindly tick a little box marked “accept terms and conditions” or let high-street snake oil merchants…
Key points
- Fontaines DC release their fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, on XL.
- The album explores social media's context collapse and the degradation of humanity.
- It features a duet with Rosalía on the track Where Is Gone?.
Fontaines DC have released their fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, on the XL label. The review describes it as a beguiling, endlessly inventive and frequently astonishing record from a group at increasing ease with being the best band of their generation.
The album follows 2024's Romance, which became the band's first platinum-certified album. For this new LP, the Dublin band's wardrobes are more or less back to normal as the music reaches new heights, indicating comfort and confidence.
Themes and sound
Frontman Grian Chatten has said he wanted to write about the context collapse of social media and the willing degradation of what it means to be human, living in a time when 'the mask is wearing the face a little more'. The review states that Dopamine Chamber embodies this idea with poetry and a thrilling and terrifying aptitude for seduction.
Chatten's lyrics question reality and the truth that animates desire while offering promises of salvation that may or may not be what they seem. The band's darkly alluring music, full of heady absolution, makes it impossible not to succumb.
the mask is wearing the face a little more
— Grian Chatten
Musical influences and highlights
Lead single Marianne makes the album's intention explicit, with Chatten chanting 'I can help you disappear' over spiralling strings. The review calls it a massive song, a beckoning void.
Guitarist Conor Curley said he wanted to avoid sounds that immediately recalled historic bands. The review notes that Happy for You has the Cure's sour, lonely twang, Mimesis a roughshod New Order bassline, and Demolition a sledgehammer grunge attack, yet they sound like artefacts in the band's soundworld rather than pastiche.
The duet Where Is Gone? with Rosalía is described as absolutely astonishing, channelling Morricone grandeur and mid-century balladry. The review compares it to Nick Cave and PJ Harvey's Henry Lee and calls it a peerless would-be Bond theme.
