20. It’s Amazing to Be Young (2025)
A single inspired by the birth of bassist Conor Deegan’s daughter, It’s Amazing to Be Young is a lovely example of Fontaines DC operating in euphoric mode, a relatively recent addition to their emotional mood board: “Sometimes,” offered frontman Grian Chatten, “optimism is a necessary delusion.”
19. Death Kink (2024)
It’s often cheeringly difficult to work out exactly what Fontaines DC’s influences are, but the shadow of Pixies definitely hangs over Romance’s Death Kink, from the string-bending lead guitar line on the chorus to the fabulously wonky solo and the abrupt ending. A delight, albeit one as dark-hued as the title suggests.
18. A Lucid Dream (2020)
The best take on A Lucid Dream might be the radically different “live version” released as a single in 2021, which slows the tempo, drags a piano into proceedings and amps up the song’s ineffable sense of menace. That said, the original – speedy drums, abstract guitar noise, ferocious climax – is quite something, too.
17. Big (2019)
As introductions to a new band go, the opening track of Fontaines DC’s debut album, Dogrel, takes some beating. Big is a fierce, snotty, swaggering, supremely exciting statement of intent (“Dublin in the rain is mine … I’m gonna be big”) that immediately lets listeners know they are in the presence of something special.
16. In the Modern World (2024)
The saga of “a fictional throuple together amid Armageddon” – tale as old as time, etc – written by Chatten during a spell of isolation in Los Angeles, In the Modern World feels a little like one of Lana Del Rey’s LA noir tales shot through Fontaines’ grimy lens, with startling results.
15. Skinty Fia (2022)
As with a lot of songs on Fontaines’ third album, the lyrics of the title track deal in ambiguity and confusion, as a recently expat Irishman grapples with different notions of Irishness among the diaspora. But there’s nothing ambiguous about the music – a muscular, funky rhythm section overlaid with eerily gothic guitar and industrial noise.
14. Hurricane Laughter (2019)
Fontaines’ pummelling early approach in miniature: a relentless, Krautrock-y riff – think Can’s Mother Sky – turned up to 11, frantic post-punk guitars, vocals that somehow manage to feel laconic and forceful at the same time, a remarkable sense of confidence and purpose dripping from the entire enterprise.
13. Big Shot (2022)
In retrospect, Big Shot sounds not unlike a dry run for the widescreen, expansive sound Fontaines would explore on 2024’s Romance, but it’s a fabulous track in its own right, driven by an immense, glowering guitar riff. Check the strings-and-piano live version that highlights the sombre majesty of its melody.
12. I Don’t Belong (2020)
A lot of A Hero’s Death, their second album, suggested the success of its predecessor, Dogrel, sat uneasily with Fontaines DC; opener I Don’t Belong, an unflinching and remarkably affecting portrait of alienation and egotism on tour, certainly does. The music broods and wrongfoots the listener: you think it’s building to an epic climax, but it just dies away, unresolved.
11. Marianne (2026)
It’s hard to think of another alternative rock album in 2026 as eagerly awaited as Fontaines DC’s Dopamine Chamber, trailed as a bleaker counterpart to Romance. The slow-motion synth chug of the first single, Marianne – epic, possessed of a superb pop melody and faintly disquieting lyrically – did nothing to damp down the anticipation.
10. Televised Mind (2020)
Released prior to A Hero’s Death, Televised Mind is a queasy reflection on the impact of social media, its lyrics too oblique to fall into cliche. Between the fuzzed-out bass (apparently influenced by the Prodigy), the scrabbling, corrosively distorted guitars and Chatten’s dead-eyed drawl, it builds up a powerful, infectious mood of anxiety.
9. Favourite (2024)
You would never have imagined the punchy, dark-hued band behind Dogrel might one day come up with anything quite as sweetly irresistible as Romance’s closer, Favourite. It’s the kind of glorious, sunlit guitar jangle that could have been an indie disco floor-filler at virtually any point in the last 40 years.
8. Liberty Belle (2018)
Initially, at least, Fontaines DC were heralded as a punk band. They turned out to be something far less straightforward than that. But you can see how it happened from Liberty Belle, an invigorating mass of frantically thrashed guitars, thumping drums and lyrics that cast a rueful eye over Dublin street life.
7. A Hero’s Death (2020)
Amid the troubled album of the same name, A Hero’s Death feels like a series of notes to self – “Don’t give up too quick / You only get one line, you better make it stick” – set to music that balances darkness with flickers of light in the buoyant rhythm and backing vocals.
6. Nabokov (2022)
Skinty Fia’s stunning closer ends the album on a bleak note. The lyrics offer a grim view of the compromises involved in a long-term relationship, while the music is a maelstrom of guitars from the darker end of the shoegazing spectrum. There’s nothing dreamlike about their heaving din, just a disorienting claustrophobia.
5. Roman Holiday (2022)
As a wall of guitar drifts beguilingly along, Roman Holiday offers a brilliant evocation of the complex feelings evoked by moving to London, equal parts agog with excitement – “Baby come on, get your high heels on” – and wary and confused, the latter emotions amplified by Ireland’s problematic relationship with Britain.
4. Boys in the Better Land (2019)
It’s cut from a noticeably different musical cloth – a heady, intense rush of distorted guitars, the apotheosis of Dogrel’s youthful blast – but you could see Boys in the Better Land as a counterpoint to Roman Holiday: an equally complicated set of emotions evoked by Fontaines DC’s home town of Dublin.
3. Jackie Down the Line (2022)
This relates the saga of an abusive relationship, told from the point of view of the unrepentant abuser – Chatten’s vocal delivers some spectacularly grim lines with a callously diffident shrug – and rendered all the more chilling by its infernally catchy melody. A genuinely amazing song.
2. Starburster (2024)
The song that introduced Fontaines V2.0:– image more striking, music more pop-facing without sacrificing any of their agitated urgency. Starburster’s monstrous beat, orchestral samples and guitar twang vaguely resemble trip-hop retooled for a more fretful era, with Chatten’s vocal punctuated by panic-attack gasps. Hooky but glowering and supremely powerful.
1. I Love You (2022)
The centrepiece of Skinty Fia starts straightforwardly enough: a cliched title, a gentle, faintly Cure-ish intro of bass and gothy guitar. But I Love You just keeps building and building, ratcheting up the tension through a lengthy kick-drum-driven interlude, as Chatten’s lyrical open letter to Ireland gets more knotty and conflicted, his voice more fraught and antagonised: “This island’s run by sharks with children’s bones stuck in their jaws.” It’s five minutes of music that leaves the listener wrung out: dense, complex, emotive and crushing. You can’t imagine any of Fontaines DC’s peers making anything remotely like it.
Dopamine Chamber is released via XL on 16 October
