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The Irish band Fontaines D.C. builds on their global success with the new album “Dopamine Chamber,” which a band member describes as the soundtrack to our “glorious age of distraction.”
Transcript
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we’ll sample some new music. NPR Music critic and correspondent Ann Powers has been listening to the Irish band Fontaines D.C. and their album “Dopamine Chamber.”
ANN POWERS, BYLINE: Poetic and political, with a distinctly Irish flair for immersive storytelling, Fontaines D.C. spent its first decade becoming one of the best rock bands out there, perfecting a driving sound based on hypnotic rhythms and the gruff declarations of its lead singer, Grian Chatten.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SIX SHOT MORNING”)
FONTAINES DC: (Singing) Six shot morning. It’s a beautiful world.
POWERS: Bassist Conor Deegan says, in those years, nothing mattered more to the band than a great live show.
CONOR DEEGAN: We always wanted to do the approach like the Rolling Stones, where they, you know, they recorded everything live. It was like a living document of their live show and what they can actually do as a band. But at a certain point, our ambitions just started to grow.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SIX SHOT MORNING”)
FONTAINES DC: (Singing) Always.
POWERS: The group’s new album, “Dopamine Chamber,” perfects a more expanded sound Fontaines started to explore on 2024’s breakthrough album, “Romance.” For this one, they’ve added vintage synths and strings. And they worked with producer James Ford, who is known for helping rock bands find the dance grooves in their sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF FONTAINES D.C. SONG, “MIMESIS”)
POWERS: “Dopamine Chamber” builds a sound world that’s eerily evocative of the often bewildering moment we’re living through, which is precisely the intent, says Grian Chatten.
GRIAN CHATTEN: I think I just want to make people really feel things about the world that they live in, you know? Because it’s such a terrifying world, like, at the moment.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MIMESIS”)
FONTAINES DC: (Singing) I drove such a long, long way here. Your indifference won’t make me disappear.
POWERS: The uncanny, sonic and lyrical blend on “Dopamine Chamber” reflects Chatten and the band’s desire to explore how human emotion survives in an increasingly mechanized world.
CHATTEN: I wanted the record to feel like it was, like, a distinct place where you walked through and you felt both of these things interacting with each other so that you could kind of get a sense of what we’re losing and where we might be headed towards.
POWERS: “Dopamine Chamber” captures the feeling of past and future colliding. A student of Yeats and Rimbaud and art-house cinema, Chatten traveled around Europe’s great capitals, soaking up a sense of history. In the studio, the band experimented with vintage Russian synths and watched Japanese robot movies. The goal, Chatten says, was to create an alluring disquiet, as on the ballad, “Where Is Gone?” a duet with the Spanish singer, Rosalía.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WHERE IS GONE?”)
FONTAINES DC AND ROSALÍA: (Singing) I remember when thеy held me up to the sunshinе. Until I called, Baby, if it’s real…
CHATTEN: We wanted the tone of futuristic, but also kind of, like, real, like, luscious strings, like with “Where Is Gone?” We kind of subvert a lot of the strings with this instrument called the Therevox, which is kind of like a theremin. There’s a guttural kind of, like, quality to that. It kind of undermines the strings.
(SOUNDBITE OF FONTAINES D.C. SONG, “WHERE IS GONE?”)
POWERS: Conor Deegan says that such innovations are natural for a band that’s challenged itself and its listeners since the beginning.
DEEGAN: Basically, the thing we’ve been interested in ever since we made our first album is the combining of different things together that shouldn’t belong together to try and find something that’s really true or really real.
POWERS: With the release of “Dopamine Chamber,” Fontaines D.C. has reached a new level, both in popularity – the band is now playing stadiums and arenas – and artistically. For Chatten, though, it’s all part of the quest.
CHATTEN: I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that there’s almost, like, one kind of grand thing that I’m trying to say that I’m trying to probably, like, impart on the world before I – you know, before I get old and die. You know what I mean? There’s, like, a kind of – there’s one thing that I’ll always be chasing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MARIANNE”)
FONTAINES DC: (Singing) Cinematic feeling. Understand this is your life.
POWERS: That drive is what makes Fontaines D.C. so exciting. And “Dopamine Chamber” may be the best rock album of the year. It’s definitely one that captures the feeling of 2026.
I’m Ann Powers, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MARIANNE”)
FONTAINES DC: (Singing) ‘Cause I’m wired off the fuel.
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