Fontaines D.C. – “Tongue” [Video]

Video · XL Recordings

Fontaines D.C. Keep Pushing Into the Unknown With “Tongue”

The Irish five-piece share the second single from Dopamine Chamber, their most radical album yet, arriving October 16 via XL Recordings.

If “Marianne” announced that Fontaines D.C. had left their post-punk comfort zone behind for good, “Tongue” demonstrates just how far they’re willing to go. The second single from Dopamine Chamber is physical and disorienting: Conor Deegan manipulates tape speed to warp the bass into something that recalls sampled hip-hop, Carlos O’Connell runs Grian Chatten’s vocal through a sampler until it sounds like a malicious extraterrestrial transmission, and guitars, piano, strings, and orchestration gradually fracture the song’s stoic surface until the whole thing comes apart. Directed by John Angus Stewart and shot in New York City, the video matches the song’s disorienting energy beat for beat.

Dopamine Chamber, their fifth album and follow-up to the UK platinum-certified Romance, was made with producer James Ford across London, the English countryside, and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions. It features a collaboration with ROSALÍA on “Where Is Gone?” and finds the band leaning fully into their most seductive, orchestrated sound yet.

Across five albums Fontaines D.C. have refused to repeat themselves, moving from the scrappy Dublin post-punk of Dogrel through A Hero’s Death, the chart-topping Skinty Fia, and the anarchic Romance. Dopamine Chamber is their most decisive turn yet. As Chatten puts it, there’s a poignant sense of being on the brink of some other kind of humanity, or non-humanity. They’ve built the chamber. What happens inside it is the experiment.

Pre-Order Dopamine Chamber ↗

1Six Shot Morning

2Marianne

3Mimesis

4Happy For You

5Demolition

6Tongue

7One Man

8Where Is Gone? with ROSALÍA

9You Miss Me

10Japan

11Intimate