Dopamine Chamber

About

<b>Fontaines D.C.</b>’s fifth album <i>Dopamine Chamber</i> opens with a brooding bassline and shooting synths before lead singer Grian Chatten’s deep, echoing vocals kick in. <b>“Six Shot Morning”</b> slowly builds into something futuristic, haunting, and strangely captivating. It’s an absorbing intro—and a neat summation of the mood on <i>Dopamine Chamber</i>, an album that draws you in and keeps you firmly in its grip until it’s over. Following the huge mainstream success of their 2024 record <i>Romance</i>, Fontaines D.C. could well have burrowed down the path laid by its buoyant indie-pop closer “Favourite.” Instead, the Dubliners went darker, tapping into the dread and disillusionment that comes from living in an imperiled and high-tech world. There are nods to Silicon Valley and the sky “crying on a beautiful world” (“Six Shot Morning”) alongside fatigue at “living in a photograph” and our always-on lives (“Well, everybody’s depressed/We’re running on a wheel,” goes <b>“Mimesis”</b>). On <b>“Marianne,”</b> Chatten promises escape—even if it doesn’t exactly sound like he’d take you anywhere better (“You should come and stay here, I can help you disappear”)—and he suggests, later in the record, that the only place any of us can go to feel better is the “Dopamine chamber/Just tryna kill the pain.” Chatten has said much of his lyrical inspiration came from spending time in Venice, a city endangered by climate change and which became a metaphor for a world in decline. So far, so depressing. And yet, even though you get the sense it’s unwitting, <i>Dopamine Chamber</i> offers up an excellent antidote to any end-times despair. First: AI could never make music this good. Second: There’s still far too much beauty in this world to give in to gloom. You’ll hear it all over this album, whether in the vast expanse of “Marianne,” the loving goodbye of <b>“Happy for You,”</b> or Chatten’s sighing vocals against the strings and swirling outro of <b>“One Man.”</b> And then there’s <b>“Where Is Gone?,”</b> a sublime and cinematic collaboration—the band’s first ever—with <b>ROSALÍA</b> that’s this album’s crowning achievement. If that all sounds too opulent, Fontaines still get freaky too, as on the twisting <b>“Tongue,”</b> which feels like a sibling to <i>Romance</i>’s “Starburster.” And with the ’80s synth-pop of “Mimesis,” they make the case that even if the world <i>is</i> ending, you can still have some fun. It seems remarkable that only seven years separate this record and their 2019 debut <i>Dogrel</i>, on which the band navigated Irish identity against butter-knife-blunt post-punk. <i>Dopamine Chamber</i> marks yet another bold departure from their beginnings, its songs revealing a quintet—increasingly referred to as the best band of their generation—more ambitious than ever yet still harnessing the fizzing, pent-up energy that’s made every Fontaines release feel so vital. But it reveals, too, what’s steadily become this band’s secret weapon: an excellent pop sensibility that means their songs bury themselves under your skin (just try and get some of these melodies, and Chatten’s singular delivery, out of your head). Ever since they broke out, the band has been on an apparent mission to outrun whatever they did last. In 2026, no one else is sounding like this—and by their next record, Fontaines probably won’t either. <b>Our Favorite Moment:</b> The twinkling piano solo midway through “Tongue,” the perfect foil to the rest of the song’s swaggering, almost sideways energy and a moment to breathe before its brilliantly hectic outro.

via Apple Music