Fontaines D.C. ‘Dopamine Chamber’ review: Dystopia has never sounded so glorious

The first thing you will hear on the fifth album from Fontaines D.C, is the futuristic synths and the imposing bass that kicks off its first track, ‘Six Shot Morning’. “Silicon Valley took a photograph,” comes Grian Chatten’s vaguely sinister chant on that song.

As those big-tech-gazing lyrics suggest, here is an album where Ireland’s boldest band are imparting the ever-relatable message that while the future is here, promised utopias of old couldn’t be further from the truth and the world is, in a word, fucked. The eponymous Dopamine Chamber, for instance, is partly a reference to the devices which disturbingly allow us to self-prescribe happiness every day. Through 12 bold and consistently brilliant tracks with the ability to make you feel an entire gamut of emotions, the band have deliberately created their own chamber. Happily, their chamber is a far more enjoyable prospect than the doomscrolling which defines our days.

‘Marianne’, which was the first single to emerge from the record, arrives early on and feels like an unsettling, Lynchian invitation into a world and delivers the starkest of mantras. “This year, you should come and stay here/You can follow my lead/I can help you disappear…” comes Chatten’s cry. In other words, hedonism and escapism seem like pretty favourable options during these most tumultuous of times. It’s a similar story on ‘Mimesis’, which chugs along with a groove that feels halfway between the 80s highs of New Order and Depeche Mode. “Everyone’s depressed, we’re running on a wheel,” admits Chatten on that track. There’s no denying that, but it’s to the band’s credit that you can already hear the soaring synths of this song playing a significant role when the band hit the stadiums for the first time next summer.

The production on Dopamine Chamber also sees the band experiment with electronics in a way they haven’t before. Doom-laden basslines collide with twinkling pianos on ‘Tongue’, while ‘One Man’ – the track which confronts the “dopamine chamber” head-on – is defined by widescreen string arrangements. This cinematic edge reaches an almighty conclusion on the haunting ‘Where Is Gone’, an orchestral duet which features the vocals of Rosalía and sounds like it could be the theme to a Bond film and a Sergio Leone epic all at once.

Chatten’s distinctive baritone is paired against the Spanish star’s soothing vocals as the pair trade verses before teaming up for a powerfl chorus. As far as grandiose voices combining for a tale of doomed lovers goes, it feels up there with Nick Cave and Kylie’s ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’, even if it’s not quite as sinister as the 90s murder ballad. And s the album comes to a close, the woozy ‘Japan’ is up there as one of the most beautiful songs Fontaines D.C. have ever recorded.

All this is evidence of an endlessly thrilling evolution few would have predicted when these scrappy post-punkers first emerged from Dublin’s Workman’s Clubs at the tail end of the 2010s. If 2024’s Romance saw the band embrace the surreal and otherworldly, this record comes straight back down to Earth and, ironically, has something important to say about our increasingly otherworldly reality. We might be sailing towards the abyss, but generational bands like Fontaines D.C. are ensuring that the journey will sound glorious.