Fontaines D.C. give Rolling Stone a tour of their phones’ music libraries, discuss their new album Dopamine Chamber, and talk about recruiting Rosalia in the latest episode of our Song Shuffle series.
The band’s Grian Chatten and Carlos O’Connell, whose new LP Dopamine Chamber arrives Friday, first give Rolling Stone’s Leah Lu a randomized look at what they’ve been listening to, with Chatten first spotlighting British indie band the Tubs and their song “Illusion Pt. 2.”
“It sounded so convincingly retro, not even retro but the sounds were so confidently what they were,” Chatten said of the track. “There’s a huge hint of Johnny Marr but the singer’s got this incredible voice that reminds of Gun Club [singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce]. There’s an alchemy that they have that’s doing something really new I think.”
O’Connell’s personal tastes skew older, with Nineties acts like Primal Scream and Spiritualized emerging from the shuffle, as well as fellow Irishman Elvis Costello and his debut album My Aim Is True.
“Grian introduced me to that album, and there was a period in the band in the very start where we were maybe influenced by that Costello album,” O’Connell said. “I think melodically, it’s so tight. There’s an edge to it as well, but it’s so slick. I feel like Costello with that album brought all the main aspects of that early rock n’ roll and made it sound so fresh. It still sounds so fresh.”
Chatten’s phone next shuffled to the National’s “Mistaken for Strangers,” with the singer praising the lyricism of Matt Berninger.
“My introduction to a lot of music is through mixtapes my mom and my dad made for each other in the car. We lived quite far from the school I went to as a kid so the car journeys were a large part of my life. It was the same mixtapes over and over again so one of the things that was fresh around that time, I was 13 or something like that, that track was added to it,” Chatten said. “I think there’s elements of that production and that sound that has made their way onto our records.”
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Following the success of 2024’s Romance, the Fontaine D.C. members talked about their new album and what their goals are this time around. “Not repeating ourselves,” O’Connell said, while Gratten added, “Still enjoy being in the room with each other with instruments and still find inspiration, which fortunately for me is still the case.”
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For the first time ever on a Fontaines D.C. album, the group welcomes a guest contributor, with Rosalia turning the track “Where Is Gone?” into a duet.
“The two of us especially were really big fans of hers for awhile, and then during Romance we were flirting with the idea of approaching her,” Chatten said of the collaboration. “We were closed to finishing mixing and mastering, and Carlos rang me and said, ‘I think we would be remiss if we didn’t shoot our shot with this and ask her if she’d be interested.’ Because we’d heard she was into our music. So we sent her four tracks, and I think she came back and said she was interested in “Where Is Gone?” and then two days later we had a full vocal.”
