Dopamine Chamber is colder, stranger and further afield from the streets and pubs of Dublin than anything the Irish rock juggernaut has produced to date. It’s Fontaines D.C.’s second record in a row with producer James Ellis Ford, and this is the sonic direction Romance was pointing towards, adhering mostly to a more synthesized, industrial and new wave informed sound. Gravamen is staked deep from the first sounds. “Six Shot Morning” plods in low before beaming into frenzied synths and swaling guitars, a dramatic opener that establishes the thesis with a repeating chorus: “Melancholy hearts in emotion filming / melancholy hearts in a motion film.”
Lead single “Marianne” is intensely cinematic and tragic, with a Depeche-polished heavy industrial sound and lyrics spinning a tale of dangerous romance that tips dark, as Grian Chatten sings, “You can go on dreaming / you can go under the knife.” After Romance tunes turned up in seemingly every other prestige-TV needle drop over the last couple of years, this one will surely do a healthy amount of soundtracking on the tube.
The record’s center of gravity sits midway, where a new essential triad starts with “Tongue”—a distorted, pitched up and cartoonish Chatten vocal (“Oh, she has a tongue to take apart your life”) over dueling low ends on synth and electric bass. The payoff comes when the tune drops into an austere piano bridge-line and detonates in an outro of frenzied cacophonous chaos akin to a Radiohead rave-up. It’s the clearest evidence of Ford’s hand and the likeliest to jolt a festival crowd to madness.
“One Man” is a majestic exhalation: slow, then soaring on strings, where Chatten delivers more of the thesis: “Dopamine chamber / just tryna kill the pain / you can’t escape the feeling / once you’ve given it a name.”
“Where Is Gone?” sets Chatten’s vocals against Rosalía in the band’s first duet over a melody that swells like a Bond theme, with a big, enveloping chamber sound: it’s just the start of another show / to hurt you / and make you feel / alive. Closer “Intimate” namechecks beauty kings and beauty queens, then delivers a crushing rapid-fire verse at “Starburster” speed before droning out. (“The type of step that takes you far away from true romance,” as one line goes.)
One of the world’s hottest bands is five for five and somehow makes that old new wave sound new again in the process.
