A room with a view of the Fontaines D.C.

Lucy Honeychurch finds a sense of freedom in Italia, but during her stay in Florence she is disappointed because her room does not have a view of the Arno, as she had hoped. The protagonist of Forster’s novel is a tourist who has yet to learn how to experience the world through her own eyes. For to truly see means to look beyond images, conventions and preconceived notions. Although *A Room with a View* may not have been among the books Fontaines D.C. were reading whilst writing their fifth album, *Dopamine Chamber* tells the story of an escape from a daily life tainted by unstable romantic relationships, alienation, desire, emotional dependence and the struggle to feel truly alive. It is a surreal and cinematic album, linked in part to Italia. Here, in a sort of Grand Tour 2.0 and listening to Mina, the singer Grian Chatten travelled as a romantic tourist through the ‘faded splendour’ of Venice and Sicily, all the way to Palermo, where some of the album’s vocals were recorded in a room, amidst mattresses and pillows.

The tracks on *Dopamine Chamber* have absorbed the relentless rain that Fontaines D.C. watched falling from a studio in north-west London. Here, working with James Ford, they recorded an album that stands in stark contrast to *Romance*, delving deep into the lives of characters who view their existence as a film, rather than simply living it. A feeling made all the more profound following the death of their manager Trevor Dietz, to whom the album is dedicated. But “Dopamine Chamber” is a hazy space in which mind-altering music reverberates. Orchestral pop, the electronic darkness of Depeche Mode, violent bursts of guitar and trip-hop all melt together on a teaspoon warmed by that flame of ‘love and hope’ that Fontaines D.C. sought to protect on their previous album.

The drums pound out the weariness of hearing ‘always the same noise, always the same laughter’ in ‘Mimesis’, whilst the shoegaze undertones of the past return in tracks such as ‘Demolition’ and the hallucinatory nursery rhyme of ‘Tongue’; the Smashing Pumpkins of “Tonight, Tonight” resurface in “Happy for You”. In “One Man”, Chatten seeks a human connection, whilst an orchestra plays around him, evoking Björk’s most emotional moments. Her voice intertwines with Rosalía’s in ‘Where Is Gone?’, a song perfect for the closing credits of a new James Bond film, perhaps due to its retro, Burt Bacharach-style atmosphere – a composer whose songs Mina herself has sung in Italian. ‘You Miss Me’ takes the album back to the sombre mood of ‘Marianne’, the first single to herald an album that features fewer standout tracks than in the past, particularly compared to the band’s first trilogy (‘Dogrel’, ‘A Hero’s Death’ and ‘Skinty Fia’), which centred on rock and the relationship between the five members and their Irish roots. With “Romance”, the band embraced a different sound and aesthetic, confirming their great ambition, and “Dopamine Chamber” follows in its footsteps, taking on a more ambient feel: its tracks may not feature memorable hooks as in the past, but they draw you into a world of their own. Fontaines D.C. haven’t saved rock, as was claimed when they first emerged, but they continue to explore nuances of pop that make them unpredictable. They’ve always been on the run: from Dublin, from their own sound, from the weight of a cultural and musical tradition. Now that they’ve asked themselves where we end up when we run away, they leave us wandering through a room in search of an emotion to experience – even through pain – in an unhealthy need to rediscover our humanity. What will happen when we finally get a view?