Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber (black)

Fontaines D.C.’s fifth album ‘Dopamine Chamber’ finds the Dublin band moving away from their earlier guitar sound towards colder electronics, samples, marching drums and flashes of 1960s Italian pop.

Produced by James Ford, the record explores gratification and anxiety in an age of AI, environmental collapse, political violence and endless online distraction. Several songs dispense with guitars entirely as the band pursue what guitarist Conor Curley describes as music that points towards the future. Grian Chatten calls the album a “catastrophic warning”, with escapism and pleasure increasingly difficult to separate from the forces causing the unease.