Grian Chatten’s dulcet tones and Irish lilt beckon to the bleakness of the Irish landscape and the beauty of its wildness too. With the release of their new album, Fontaines D.C. remain uniquely Irish, with the poetry of Samuel Beckett still echoing throughout their lyricism. Moreover, the band has simultaneously resisted pandering to an American audience and manages to condemn the cultural decline of the west through their consistent criticism of the modern age. Thus, ‘Dopamine Chamber’ is a fitting name also considering the catchy hooks of the bassline, pioneered by Conor ‘Deego’ Degan III, a constant repetitive dirge, alluring and sulky, just in time for autumn.
The callback to the ‘80s with a more dark-wave sound than previous albums adds an addictive nostalgia. Undertones of Depeche Mode and The Cure are present, with some criticizing the similarity of ‘Happy for You’ and ‘You Miss Me’ to the latter. However, the likeness is perhaps a clever theatrical flare due to the phenomenon and rise of ‘borrowed nostalgia’ in younger generations, due to a doom-scrolling-induced perception of life before their birth. Fontaines D.C. simply harnesses this form of escapism in the musicality of their new album, a chemically-cultivated dopamine-fix.
David Bowie’s lyrics ‘she’s hooked to the silver screen’ from ‘Life on Mars?’ now seem almost prophetic, considering the song was written in 1971, but the digital element of it now seems particularly pertinent to the themes of ‘Dopamine Chamber’, the single ‘Marianne’ released in August is a call to the age of algorithms and phone addiction, almost a cautionary tale, with Chatten exclaiming to ‘understand this is your life, you can go on dreaming’.
It is clear that the band worships Rosalía as she features on the longest track ‘Where is Gone?, with each song almost building to its crescendo, due to her presence. The softness of her voice adds an element of hope practically devoid in the rest of the album. In a recent interview with NME, Chatten states that Rosalía ‘has a terrifying level of talent’ and that her voice has ‘something kind of eerily sort of dystopian in it’. It is clear that the voice being used as a musical instrument is what heightens the emotional capacity of this album.
However, undeniably for like-minded fans of a certain genre, the release of Cameron Winter ‘s ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ on the 9th of October somewhat overshadows the grandiosity of ‘Dopamine Chamber’. The stripped-back, tortured vocals of the Geese frontman is a stark contrast to Fontaines D.C.’s melodramatic compositions. Comparing bands is superficial and reductive, especially the comparison to a solo artist. But, the overly-exaggerated post-production of ‘Dopamine Chamber’ with its artificial feel, subtracts from the lyricism. This is one criticism to be made, however, is that not the whole point of the album? The takeover of electronic synth replicates our machine minds or our ‘televised minds’.
8/10
Image credits: @fontainesband on Instagram
