How does a rock band get big - stadium big - in the modern world? For a while Arctic Monkeys looked like they were going to be the last really big rock band; and then, weirdly Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. just kept on getting bigger, and now they’re playing stadiums.

In a way, it doesn’t make much sense. Skinty Fia, a bizarre combination of Happy Mondays groove and lingering alienation, was the band’s first UK and Irish number one in 2022; but it was with Romance in 2024 that things really blew up. And for what? For a record that aped the crude nu-metal look and feel of Korn, of all things, allied on Starburster - the big single - to the sound of a panic attack. 

These are not the typical ingredients for rock success. And, yes, on Favourite and It's Amazing to Be Young Fontaines nailed the kind of sing-a-long-happiness, burst of emotion that will fill indie discos until the earth smashes into the sun. But that didn’t stop Romance, the album’s title track, being a creeping piece of semi-industrial oddness on a record that was full of left turns.

And then along comes Dopamine Chamber, the band’s fifth studio album, and Fontaines are playing arenas around Europe and stadiums in the UK and Ireland. And, once again, the album is weird. Great but fundamentally weird, particularly for a new stadium band. (Although, for what it’s worth, Fontaines do seem to have toned down the American-tourist-in-Edinburgh vibe of their look.)

Marianne, the first single from the record, suggested that Depeche Mode were going to be a big influence, with its throbbing synths and a chorus that sounds precision engineered to rotate stadiums in Eastern Europe. Initially at least, this does appear to be the case, with the vicious Six Shot Morning also serving up a dose of gothic electro pop and Mimesis splitting the difference between Depeche Mode and New Order, thanks to a bass line that is pure Peter Hook counter melody. Happy For You, which follows, throws another giant of 80s alternative music into the mix, its brooding, dripping guitars suggesting The Cure in their Pornography pomp.

From hereon in, though, things only get stranger. Demolition suggests the nu-metal influences may have lingered a little longer, while the truly bizarre Tongue adds the incongruous mixture of chipmunk rapping and synths that tinkle like Japanese New Age tunes. 

Tongue also suggests another of the album’s unlikely cousins in trip hop - and more specifically Unkle’s debut album Psyence Fiction - with its cavernous, David Axelrod-ish drum production, dub-influenced bass lines and general sense of drama. (Drummer Tom Coll is in fabulous form throughout the record, incidentally.) This sound is further refined in two of the album’s most wonderfully sounding songs, One Man and You Miss Me. Album closer Intimate, meanwhile, does all that with an added dose of prog freak out, Grian Chatten opening the song like a paranoid android in the depths of a metallic melt down.

Dopamine Chamber is a strange, outlandish album, then. And not, perhaps, on the face of it, one likely to raise the Fontaines D.C. star even further. But the actual story of Fontaines D.C’s success - and it is a welcome one - is you can be as strange as you want if you can dream up the kind of tunes that you wake you up in the morning with their essence on your breath, so catchy and profound do they feel.

Fontaines D.C. - and in particular singer Grian Chatten - have long possessed that genius for the obvious that separates the very biggest bands from those stuck in mid-tier festival land. 

A Hero’s Death, back in 2020, was the first indication of this, with lines like “Tell your mother that you love her / And go out of your way for others” that sound absolutely leaden on paper but come to sparkling life on record, tailed to a chorus that proclaims “life ain't always empty”, like this is the most important advice you have ever heard.

But it was I Love You, from Skinty Fia, that first grabbed my attention, at a time when I was - or thought I was - ambivalent at best to Fontaines D.C., its lyrics declaring, again and again, “I love you” with a tooth-grinding intensity that banished any banality from a phrase far overused in pop music.

It helps that Grian Chatten can really sell these lines, his Liam Gallagher-ish bark, which works on sheer force of personality, mixing more frequently with something softer and sweeter, under-singing at times with the quiet power of New Order’s Bernard Sumner. Chatten is in superb form on Dopamine Chamber, his voice both the lightest and heaviest tool in the Fontaines box.

And then there are the songs. For all of Dopamine Chamber’s muscular, 80s power and cinematic breaks, the album’s two best songs are the quietest, most slyly impactful ones: the gorgeously Bond-ish ballad Where is Gone with Rosalía, a song that will make you believe “I remember when…” is the most powerful phrase in recorded music history; and Japan, possibly the best song in the whole Fontaines catalogue, thanks to a neck-hair raising melody and a quietly devastating delivery from Chatten that will break the heart of anyone who has ever suffered from romantic longing. (Extra marks, too, for the sun-blushed synth intro.)

Both songs remind me of Chaos for the Fly, Chatten’s hugely underrated solo album from 2023, in which he stripped back the guitar riffing and noise to reveal melodies that felt absolutely eternal. Two songs, in particular, stood out from that record: Fairlies and Salt Throwers Off a Truck, which I said at the time (in my Pitchfork review) “could be tunes passed down through generations of public houses”.

Neither Where is Gone or Japan are straightforward, exactly. Where is Gone has a deliciously dark string arrangement that gives it the air of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s dark psychedelia, while Japan is bathed in a subtly warped electronic glow. But in both cases the strength of the underlying melodies mean that these songs could very easily have been served up as straight stadium singalongs that slip down as smoothly as £10 pints of beer at hot arena gigs.

The same logic applies to Dopamine Chamber as a whole: Fontaines could easily have taken the banal route to stadium vastness, riding their huge choruses and Chatten’s charisma to become the next Oasis. 

Instead, though, the band seemed to have grasped the wonderful truth that if you have the songs you don’t have to take the easy route; that having incredible choruses and universal appeal means you can stick spokes between the wheels of your anthems and still get even bigger, like U2 going stadium baggy on Achtung Baby or Arctic Monkeys imbibing the influence of modern hip hop and R&B on AM.

And that, perhaps, is the heartening lesson of Dopamine Chamber, a record that is undoubtedly one of the year’s best: people don’t necessarily want their music straight up and perfectly ordered - and you can do a lot with personality, charm and the subversive force of outstanding songs.

Some listening

Nikki Nair - Groundhogs

Three of my favourite things combine on Groundhogs: drums, animals and (recent Line Noise podcast guest) Nikki Nair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a groundhog in action but I can definitely imagine one scuttling around the park, happily frantic, when is listen to the semi-acoustic sounding mixture of drum kits, drum machine, handclaps and bleeps on the track that bears its name, like a Djrum record overdosed on pure fun. 

Rhyw - Suppli Crush

If Rhyw’s new single was an animal, Nikki Nair style, it would be a great dirty pig snuffling around the forest for truffles. The song is built around a brilliantly filthy synth riff that snorts, rips and snuffles around the mix, like Flat Beat gone feral, in a way that promises to absolutely make your night if the DJ plays it out. Definitely a late entry to my sacred tablets of  Dance Tracks Built on Absolutely Ridiculous Noises.

John Beltran - Éire

Sometimes producers drift back into the public consciousness for no other reason than they fit with the times. This seems to have happened in 2026 to John Beltran, whose defiantly beautiful ambient techno feels like a salve for frazzled nerves and political disappointment. Éire, which is taken from Beltram’s new album Sunrise And The Life We Live, is like a favourite jumper around the shoulders or a warm dog by the fire, a circular spin of synth melody dancing around silvery hi hats trails. It’s great - but, you know what? Beltran is always great.

Purple Pilgrims - Outside

If there is something fundamentally romantic about a waltz, then there is something fantastically romantic about a dream pop waltz of the kind that New Zealand duo Purple Pilgrims provide on Outside, all floating velvet and candle-lit ball rooms, combined with a perfectly simple melody. I’d throw myself at their feet, if it didn’t seem so vulgar.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise podcast - Primavera Sound 2027: The Ultimate Electronic Music Guide

OK the title is a bit grandiose and SEO-friendly but I hope you enjoy the “content”, in which Johann Wald and I select the best electronic music on the Primavera Sound 2027 line up, from Pole to Polygonia. 

Marina Herlop - Dja Dja

So maximalist and splendid is Marina Herlop’s new album that I simply had to review it twice. Once in video, for Radio Primavera Sound; and once in text, for DJ Magazine. 

The playlists

I have two playlists: the newest and the bestest 2026, which has all the best new music from this year; and the newest and the bestest, which dates right back to 2021. Both are available on Apple Music And Spotify.

Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026

Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026

Apple Music: The newest and the bestest

Spotify: The newest and the bestest