Given the success of their 2019 debut, the title of Fontaines DC’s second album read like a band taking wind out of their own sails before anyone else had a chance to. Singer Grian Chatten underlined that, shortly before A Hero’s Death shot into the UK charts at Number Two. “It feels good to be reminded of the fickle nature of it all,” he said, “and that you shouldn’t place too much importance on how things are now, because they could just as easily disappear.” One chart-topper and another second placing on, that caution seems absurdly unfounded, belying the confidence and capability evident as far back as the Fontaines’ self-released singles. Now comes another impressive show of purpose with their fifth album.
Produced by James Ford, who also steered 2024’s Romance and pitches in on multiple analogue synths, Dopamine Chamber considers the accelerating hellscape of the Anthropocene, with its environmental and humanitarian catastrophes, raging wars both actual and cultural, AI menace and, as per the album’s title, our wretched enslavement to hand-held screens. Not an unusual theme for any modern rock band, but here Chatten’s dispatches from the frontline of 21st-century despair darken his characteristically brooding, metaphorical sky to a level that’s off the Bortle scale. Though there’s vulnerability, gentleness and intimacy here, hope is strikingly absent. Cases in point: “If anybody got a one-way sleep/I know a body wanna go” (from “Marianne”) and “I’m submitting to the final frame/Long long waiting for the long lost game/Tired of living in a photograph/Same old rattle in the same old laugh” (“Mimesis”).
Whether his focus is existential and universal, or romantic and personal, Chatten always cuts to the bone – which could make for a depressing listen, were the music not so absorbing. If Romance leaned harder on pop melodies the follow-up boosts and toughens its emphasis, favouring thickly layered atmospherics with melodies often picked out in a quartz-like dazzle. These songs are both grand in scale and detailed without being excessively complex, and they set further distance between the Fontaines and their influences – Joy Division, Deftones, The Verve/Ashcroft, MBV – while forefronting icy synths, samplers and effects over guitars. There are a couple of “sore thumb” tracks, more of which later.
Unsettlement rushes out of the traps via “Six Shot Morning”, a ricocheting synth pulse giving way to Chatten’s voice, deep, sombre and heavily reverbed as he intones, “Silicon Valley took a photograph/Fork tongue kissing in a ten-foot bath/You and I living for a million years/Always” over a bliss-pop rush that pauses for a trancey drop, ahead of a chorus both ecstatic and disturbing in its repetition. A trance motif is central to “Mimesis”, too, though it’s matched to a cantering beat and a melody with the irresistible, gloom-pop allure of Psychedelic Furs in their black leather era. There’s a brief pull back in “Happy For You”, along with a reminder that a Dubliner’s flattened vowels can still swivel ears in 2026, before the first storm of distorted guitars and hissing synths breaks. “Demolition” is aptly titled, its delicately ringing intro and sing-speak verses in sharp contrast to the Deftones-ish, fuzz-metal chorus.
It’s all change for “Where Is Gone?”, however. Both wild card and album highlight, it sees Gretton, whose voice adopts a much warmer, softer tone, joined by avant-pop superstar Rosalía for a gorgeous, doomily romantic ballad cast along Nick Cave and Lana Del Rey lines. In contrast to that beauty, “You Miss Me” is a cut-and-shut case – a gothic guitar ripple to open, blurts of jittery synth and an expanse of mid-’90s indie rock. It’s one of the aforementioned sore thumbs. The other is a mid-paced “Japan”, which, lyrics aside (“When they fuck she leaves her body for a while/And she pays for all his shit/Till he says thanks without a smile”) has a decidedly James-ish, singalong mien. Both feel like echoes of a bygone Fontaines, so are conspicuous in the set; given that the band wrote around 40 songs for the album, their inclusion seems odd. The river will seek its source, maybe.
More in step is “One Man”, the other standout, which provides the record’s title. An unashamed softie with the faintest air of “Bittersweet Symphony” in its strings, it runs on philosophical resignation, the chorus becoming increasingly more anguished as Chatten chants, “I’m only one man”, over and over.
Fontaines DC have set themselves a high bar by releasing an album every two years since A Hero’s Death and hitting the uppermost reaches of the UK chart with each one. By now you’d imagine their concerns about “disappearing” have themselves long since gone, but perhaps not. On the evidence of Dopamine Chamber, complacency clearly isn’t in them.