Fontaines D.C. announce 5th album 'Dopamine Chamber' and share dreamy single 'Marianne'
The album is released in October
Last updated 17 hours ago
Fontaines D.C. will release their fifth studio album ‘Dopamine Chamber’ on Friday 16th October via XL Recordings.
The follow-up to 2024’s critically-lauded and Platinum-certified ‘Romance’, ‘Dopamine Chamber’ was once again produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Depeche Mode) and it sees the Irish quintet move away from the guitar aesthetic of their early records into ‘something colder, stranger and more synthetic.’
As a taster for the album, Fontaines D.C. have premiered the dreamy lead single ‘Marianne’, a seductive song about escapism and hedonism.
Listen to Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Marianne’:
A description of ‘Dopamine Chamber’ says it ‘arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us.
‘Across the album, Fontaines D.C. – Grian Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll – move between gratification and dread until the two meld together, reflecting the overwhelm of artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence all riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture.’
It continues: ‘Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet: cold synthesiser tones, marching drums, samples and triggers, several songs with no guitars at all, and the swooning strings of 1960s Italian pop pulled into something synthetic.’
Commenting on the album title, singer Grian Chatten says: “The album itself is a dopamine chamber. You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”
Explaining how Fontaines D.C. have evolved musically since ‘Romance’, Chatten continues: “I think Romance was maybe 60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling.
“This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little more.
“I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”
“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place,” adds bassist Conor Deegan. “First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?”
‘Dopamine Chamber’ is available to pre-order on LP, deluxe LP, CD, cassette and digital formats here.
Fontaines D.C. headline Reading and Leeds Festival later this month before topping the bill at Electric Picnic in their native Ireland.