There are no fewer than three songs from the new Fontaines D.C. album running through my head right now. “Mimesis” is my favorite. It’s the one that is now a part of my DJ sets. Someone at Underground last night mentioned that it’s her favorite on the album too. At least, I think that’s what she said. It’s hard to hear when I’m DJing. Then there’s “Tongue,” the one some people on Reddit thing is too weird to be a single, which is a completely incorrect assessment, and “Intimate,” the apocalyptic closer. Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to Dopamine Chamber so many times in a span of 24 hours, but I couldn’t help myself. I gorged on an album and now I’m paying the price with a very messy, and relentless, triple-song earworm that has followed me to yoga class and then the library on this Saturday afternoon.
“Dying and dying and dead,” dictates my footsteps as I walk through downtown. There’s a very specific rhythmic pattern to that line in “Intimate” that matches the deadpan delivery of the lyric, like you’re trying to count casualties and have lost track of the carnage. A week or so prior, I stood in line at a Little Tokyo record store hear Dopamine Chamber before its release. On that first listen in the store, I was struck by the heaviness of the album. It reminded me of Y2K Primal Scream and Radiohead around the time of Kid A, even if Fontaines D.C. didn’t necessarily sound like either of those bands. Dopamine Chamber felt like all of the anxious, end-of-the-world energy that was in turn-of-the-century indie and electronic albums, but had mostly been buried after 9/11. All that angst blossomed with a band of Irish poets who gave their album the most ironic title of the year.
Dopamine Chamber is about the futility in the air right now. “I wanted the album to feel like the end of the world a little bit—not necessarily a single human, but human life overall having its life flash before its eyes,” singer Grian Chatten said in a Vogue interview. And, according to the same interview, “Intimate” does imagine “a party at the end of the world.”
I walk up 5th and down Hill Street, past French tourists and local homeless people. It’s a little quiet throughout much of downtown, save for Grand Central Market, where the weekend warriors are loud and practically spilling out of the completely overhyped, and mostly overpriced, food hall. Not far from there, I spot a squished rat on the sidewalk and veer towards the curb to avoid contact. This, btw, is not an unusual sight downtown. It’s what happens when your city cares more about funding cops and their lawsuits than basic services. In fact, I’m half surprised the plague hasn’t made a comeback and I hope I didn’t just jinx us by typing that.
Speaking of the plague, I saw The Devils the other night. Even though I’ve watched the movie before, seeing the restored director’s cut in a movie theater is a completely different experience. I can’t stop thinking about The Devils. It’s become as much a part of the mess in my head as Dopamine Chamber. Ken Russell’s 1971 movie starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave is plague-adjacent, but mostly it’s about demonic possession. More precisely, it’s about a real deal political witch hunt that happened back in the 17th century.
The movie was extremely controversial in its day and has been hard to find for longer than I’ve been alive, so the release of the director’s cut restored in 4K, is a big moment for movie weirdos. It meant that we could finally see the The Devil’s naughtiest bits. While I must admit that even today’s HBO shows have nothing on the infamous nuns-gone-wild scene, that’s not what stuck with me.
Oliver Reed plays Father Urbain Grandier, henceforth referred to as the Hot Priest. It’s not easy being the Hot Priest. Sure, he’s now running the town of Loudun, where virgins and matrons alike are salivating over him, but he also has some big problems. Hot Priest accidentally knocked up his Latin pupil and her influential father is livid. Then he fell hard for one of his parishioners and secretly married her. Meanwhile, a local abbess, who has been afflicted by unhinged Hot Priest fantasies, accuses him of being an incubus. This plays into the hands of the government officials and religious higher-ups who are seeking to consolidate power and it will lead to Hot Priest’s demise, which is not a spoiler because this is a 55-year-old movie based on real history.
Hot Priest was a lothario, but he’s not the villain in the The Devils. He’s a victim of mass hysteria. The nuns aren’t villains either. They’re young women living in a cloistered environment because their parents couldn’t/wouldn’t marry them off for whatever reason. Of course they’re going to be a little thirsty. Parched even. Plus, the nuns are victims of abuse at the hands of powerful men. It’s just that Hot Priest isn’t one of them. The actual bad guys here are the politicians, clergy and influential figures who lie, threaten and rape without impunity, bending the masses to their will in the process. Sound familiar?
Coming out of The Devils, it’s easy to think that this is just the way the world works. The people in power lie and scapegoat. The masses fall for it every single time. Hell, they will even do the dirty work for these devils they know. If you’re amongst the few who don’t fall for the lies, you’re screwed.
There’s another No Kings rally happening at Grand Park today. The crowd is significantly smaller than what I saw back in March. Maybe people didn’t know it was happening. Maybe they’re burnt out. Likely, they’re burnt out. “Mimesis,” the dance song on Dopamine Chamber has the most straightforward lyric on the record. “Well, everybody’s depressed, we’re running on a wheel,” Grian Chatten sings and it’s true, no matter what you see on social media. There’s this deep, mass sadness in the ether that’s undeniable. I can feel it here at the protest, even when surrounded by signs loaded with Trump jokes.
The No Kings message is more urgent this time around. Elections are only a few weeks away and Prop 40 is a hot topic. If you’re in California you’ve turned on a TV or scrolled lately, you’ve probably been bombarded by ads against the billionaire tax and for props 41 and 42, which would also kill any chance we have of getting the ultra-rich to pay their fair share. The billionaires are spending hundreds of millions to coerce the masses into siding with them. “They think you’re stupid,” the speaker, whose name I didn’t catch, says. They really do.
And the billionaires might have a point because, we’re not just dealing with Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel here. We’re contending with everyone who is willing to do the devils’ bidding for them.
There are demands at this No Kings rally. Another speaker, whose name I also didn’t catch, rattles them off one by one, moving from city level politics to state to federal. Taxing extreme wealth gets a lot of cheers. There is more applause for abolishing ICE. But, the loudest roar I heard in the crowd was to end the arms transfer to Israel and the genocide in Gaza.
I can’t unsee the end of The Devils. It’s a grotesque scene, where Hot Priest’s execution is juxtaposed with the crowd’s amusement. Even as flames rise around him, the condemned man continues to call out the bullshit he has seen. Unfortunately, the onlookers have long stopped listening.
The scene reminds me of my favorite lyric on Dopamine Chamber – “Am I allowed to say it if nobody’s gonna listen?” from the song “Tongue.” It’s such a strong summary of right now. The world burning. Lots of people are saying lots of things, but no one is listening.
It seems like the No Kings crowd is growing as we march from City Hall to the Music Center and back. Now, the crowd is so thick that it’s divided into at least three sections chanting their own rallying cries. Cars honk in support. At one red light, two little kids, who couldn’t have been more than seven years old, lean out a car window and pump their fists in the air. So, maybe people are listening, but, most days, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for October, 2026, featuring music from Hercules & Love Affair, The Strokes, ADULT., Tinashe, Gorillaz and more.
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