On Dopamine Chamber, Fontaines D.C. are left fumbling for direction

Their follow-up, 2024’s Romance, veered in a pop direction as the band forged cleaner, chorus-and-reverb-washed mixes. On such irresistible pieces as “In the Modern World” and “Favourite”, singer Grian Chatten dialed down his tortured persona, exuding a lovelorn charisma, the set built around exemplary hooks and an expansive, open sound. Together, these two albums spotlighted the quintet’s versatility and ambition.

With Dopamine Chamber, their fifth LP, the Dublin band strive to elaborate on the template employed for Romance. “Six Shot Morning” is a beat-driven and synthy foray, with Chatten moaning like a diehard romantic. “You and I live for a million years,” he croons; the implication being that we’ll all die soon enough, but can we live fully till then? Advance single “Marianne” – swirly, echoey – features one of the album's catchier melodies, with lyrics opaque enough to sustain a sense of mystery (“You can go on dreaming”) but concrete enough to draw one in (“You can go under the knife”).

“Mimesis” is surprising for its clear homage to the ’80s playbook, conjuring an outtake from Duran Duran’s Rio or Tears For Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair, while “Happy for You” strives for a dream-pop / new-wave amalgam, sporting a wiry guitar line. Chatten’s vocal is well-nuanced on the latter, feigning a lover's nonchalance (“If you go, I won’t run after you / I swear”), while the band's midway shift into a crunchy bridge reminds us that Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell still have their distortion pedals – even if, these days, other effects are getting more use.

Unfortunately, several of Dopamine’s tracks struggle in terms of hook-craft, and the band’s sonic choices are sometimes confusing. “Demolition” experiments with a sugary, bubblegum sound before pivoting in a sultrier direction, with Chatten offering truncated, semi-staccato lines that grow tonally and rhythmically repetitive. On “Tongue”, drummer Tom Coll toys with a marching tempo. Were the other instrumentation to unfold smoothly, an alluring contrast might be established, but Chatten’s rushed delivery, along with assorted prickly accents and textures, wind up with a lurching feel that doesn’t do the piece justice. That said, the piano part midway is refreshing, combining trebly runs and bassy punctuation.

“One Man” is pensive and string-enhanced, sounding like a contender for a Bond theme song. The band reach for sublime emotions and orchestral pivots, though the instrumental motifs don’t quite coalesce, or diverge in a jazzily compelling way. Chatten’s duet with Rosalía, “Where Is Gone”, oozes mainstream, primetime potential, and will surely find its way onto 2026’s best-of lists. On the opening verse, his lachrymose tone is juxtaposed with Rosalía’s crystalline, lucid delivery, while on the chorus their voices are movingly blended. A guitar line straight out of a spaghetti-western soundscape appears intermittently. The track is memorable, even if, at five-minutes-plus, it slightly overstays its welcome.

Things pick up later with the simple yet entrancing melodies of “Japan”. Chatten is unafraid to reveal his innocence: the kid who got hurt, as all kids do, but who, under all that grown-up swagger, is still a kid. Guitars are strummy, beats straightforward. “Intimate”, meanwhile, acknowledges that time erodes beauty, that death is never far away. Intimacy, however, is possible, even essential. The hoped-for hook emerges: “Intimate is how I feel / … Intimate all through the night.” Sonically, the band integrate their appreciation for noise and the orchestral sweep.

While Romance wasn’t the most cohesive LP, the majority of its tracks included beguiling hooks and textbook popcraft. Dopamine, too, is more a grab bag of songs than a precisely outlined set. Unfortunately, in Dopamine’s case, the pop savvy appears less consistently, leaving various tunes groping for identity. For those who regard Romance and Skinty Fia as highpoints of the 2020s – individually and as an impressively rangy diptych – Dopamine Chamber may land as a bit of a letdown, the band stranded somewhere between repeating themselves and fumbling for their next direction.