From Dogrel to Dopamine Chamber: Why Fontaines D.C. Mean So Much to Us

Some bands find a sound and spend the rest of their career refining it. Fontaines D.C. have always seemed much more interested in finding out what happens when they leave it behind.

I first heard them through “Too Real”, followed quickly by “Hurricane Laughter” and “Sha Sha Sha”, and I was pretty much in immediately. There were things in there that felt familiar — flashes of The Velvet Underground, the scruffiness and romance of The Libertines — but there was also something completely their own about them. More than anything, there was this incredible sense of place. You didn’t just hear a band from Dublin; you felt like you were being dropped into their Dublin.

Since then, one of the things I’ve loved most about Fontaines D.C. is that they’ve never really allowed themselves to make the same record twice. With fifth album Dopamine Chamber now on the way, it feels like a good moment to go back through how we got here — and why, somewhere along the way, their story became tangled up with the beginning of 12 Bar too.

Dogrel — the sound of a place

Dogrel still feels incredibly immediate. The guitars are jagged, the rhythms are relentless and Grian Chatten often sounds less like he’s singing at you than delivering something he absolutely has to get out.

But underneath all of that noise was something deeply romantic. Dublin wasn’t simply where Fontaines D.C. happened to come from. It felt like another member of the band: the streets, pubs, characters, frustrations, humour and poetry all seemed to live inside the songs.

That was probably what grabbed me first. There are plenty of bands capable of writing great guitar songs; there are far fewer that can create an entire world around them. Songs like “Too Real”, “Hurricane Laughter”, “Sha Sha Sha” and “Big” felt like the beginning of something rather than the finished article.

A Hero’s Death — refusing to repeat themselves

The easy move after Dogrel would have been to make Dogrel again, only bigger. Instead, barely a year later, Fontaines D.C. came back sounding darker, more withdrawn and considerably stranger.

I’ve always heard a kind of Joy Division-like quality in A Hero’s Death: repetition, unease, space and a feeling of claustrophobia running through it. Where Dogrel seemed to be looking outward at a city, this record felt increasingly like the band were looking inward.

This was probably the point where I realised what was going to make them really special. Their identity wasn’t necessarily going to be one particular sound. Their identity was going to be the willingness to change it.

Skinty Fia — leaving Dublin without leaving it behind

Then came Skinty Fia, and again the edges moved. The record felt darker and hazier: there were moments that made me think of The Cure, flashes of shoegaze and electronic music, and much more space in the arrangements.

By this point the band were increasingly writing about Irish identity from outside Ireland. That tension — belonging somewhere, leaving it, then seeing it differently because you’ve left — gives the album so much of its weight. “I Love You” can feel beautiful, furious, affectionate and disappointed almost at the same time.

Three records in, Fontaines D.C. no longer felt like a post-punk band gradually polishing a sound. They felt like a band discovering how many different shapes they could take.

Romance — and then everything got bigger

And then came Romance. Suddenly there was colour everywhere. The clothes changed. The artwork changed. The scale changed. The music became more cinematic, more melodic and stranger, while somehow getting much bigger without losing the personality underneath it.

“Starburster” felt like an enormous leap when it arrived: recognisably Fontaines D.C., but clearly pointing somewhere new. It was the kind of single that made you want to hear the whole record immediately.

But Romance is also where the Fontaines story becomes particularly important to us.

The album arrived in August 2024, right as we were opening 12 Bar. We’d created the place because we wanted somewhere people could discover music together — not just buy a record, but hear it, talk about it and experience it with other people. Romance became our first listening party.

We filled the room, played the album before release and sold loads of copies. It was one of those early moments where something we had imagined for 12 Bar suddenly became real. So I can’t really separate this record from the beginning of the shop anymore. Whenever I hear it, part of me hears that room too.

Dopamine Chamber — where do you go next?

Which brings us to now. Fontaines D.C. have announced their fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, arriving on 16 October via XL Recordings — and once again they seem completely uninterested in standing still.

The first taste, “Marianne”, feels colder, stranger and noticeably more synthetic. To my ears there are flashes of New Order and Depeche Mode in there, alongside the widescreen melancholy that made parts of Romance so compelling. Rather than leaning harder into their reputation as one of the world’s most exciting guitar bands, they seem to be asking what happens when the guitars stop being the centre of everything.

That shift feels entirely in keeping with the band we’ve been following all along. Every time Fontaines D.C. reach a point where they could comfortably settle into what people already love about them, they choose uncertainty instead.

Pre-order Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber →

Why Fontaines D.C. mean so much to us

I think that constant evolution is ultimately why I love this band so much. There’s something in the mentality of the great bands who kept moving — The Beatles, Radiohead — not because Fontaines necessarily sound like them, but because the question always seems to be: what haven’t we done yet?

And we’ve been lucky enough to grow alongside them. I discovered those first songs simply as somebody obsessed with music. By the time Romance arrived, we were opening the doors of our own record shop and venue, putting that album on for a room full of people and watching this idea we’d had about bringing people together through music start to become real.

That’s why Fontaines D.C. aren’t just another band we stock at 12 Bar. They’ve become part of our story.

Now there’s another chapter coming. And I genuinely can’t wait to hear where Dopamine Chamber takes them next.