The band has always resisted, or at least condemned, the rougher parts of modernity: numbness, greed, solipsism. For “Starburster,” a single from the band’s fourth album, Romance, Charlton was nominated for two Grammy Awards, Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Performance. In the song “Starburster,” Charlton writes about seeking relief during a panic attack: “If it’s just a moment of happiness, I’ll bust your business,” he repeats, before taking a breath of air that suggests he’s recently been dragged unconscious from a swimming pool. (Since first hearing the phrase, I’ve often thought that “ephemeral happiness” might actually be the mainstream currency of our time.) There’s something so youthful and wry about a song like “Starburster” that it’s imbued with a bellicosity that’s easy for those who have chosen to forget. But it’s also undeniably beautiful, filled with hazy synths, guitars, looping strings and huge beats. The band is at its best in moments like this, when it finds how to combine nihilism and tenderness.
Since Dogrel, Fontaines DC has been moving towards a more dreamy, almost Lynchian dystopia, a sound that perhaps reached apotheosis in The Dopamine Room. The album was produced by James Ford, one half of electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco; Ford also produced records such as Geese, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Blur and Depeche Mode, and has a unique knack for making his songs sound both verdant and raw. The record’s opener, “Six-Gun Morning,” is reverberant and cinematic: “Silicon Valley took a picture/Kissing with forked tongues in a ten-foot bathtub/You and I lived a million years/Forever,” Chaton moans.
Many of the lyrics on “Dopamine Chamber” deal with a different form of elimination. On single “Marianne,” a lush, gothic synth-pop song about walking into emptiness, Chatten’s voice sounds pure, almost menacing: “This is the year/You should come here and stay here/You can follow my lead/I can help you disappear,” he sings in the chorus. One of my favorite new songs is Where Is Gone? ,” a moody, propulsive duet with Rosalía that’s reminiscent of Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” a 1995 murder ballad. Both songs sound romantic, but are actually about catastrophic breakdowns. In the chorus, Chatten and Rosalía’s voices are filled with a perverse ecstasy:
Although the group was hugely popular in the UK, it had yet to break through in the US. I first heard Fontaines DC in November 2020, when Iggy Pop played “Love Is The Main Thing” from the band’s second album, A Hero’s Death, on his BBC radio show: “It’s really good. Really, really good. There’s a lot of sadness in the music,” Iggy said, his voice cracking. “It’s a very, very true, well-cut lyric with a very good rhythm, a beautiful melody and a very good expression.” When “A Hero’s Death” was released in the UK, it almost cost Taylor Swift, who had just released “folklore,” her No. 1 spot on the UK charts. “Dopamine Chamber” may have been the record that catapulted Fontaines DC to less local stardom, in part because it felt like a fitting and charming reflection on modern American life, at a time when the only thing people seemed to agree on was that everyone felt alone. ❖