Dublin Trio DIVIL drop raw, restless new single ‘ORANGUTAN’

There’s something immediately striking about DIVIL — the Dublin three-piece of Danny Dempsey McMahon (vocals), Jocelyn Vance (guitar) and Conor Cusack (bass) — and it’s not just the music. These are three lifelong friends who turned to songwriting at one of the hardest possible moments: the loss of Danny’s father, followed almost immediately by Conor’s diagnosis with a rare and aggressive cancer. DIVIL didn’t form despite all that. It formed because of it.

Their debut EP ‘DIVIL I’ arrives June 19th, and today they’re sharing its second single, ORANGUTAN — a bristling, kinetic track about doing exactly the wrong things when you’re trying to feel better. Escapism. Cravings. Pacing the house alone at night, screaming into an iPad. Relatable, honestly.

The song has a brilliantly accidental origin. Jocelyn had been deep in a Dean Martin samba phase (as one does), and arrived at practice early one afternoon with a loop pedal running and those chords cycling. Danny walked in, grabbed a minute of it on his phone, and took it home.

“I remember walking up the stairs to the studio and hearing some sinister sounding guitar pumping out of the room. I just wanted to grab a snapshot of what Jocelyn was doing and take it away and go over it when I felt suitably manic to match the energy.“

That manic energy arrived on a weekend alone, self-imposed house arrest and all. Danny spent the evening fighting the urge to bail, pacing, and eventually letting rip — bad driving incidents, craving-strangling frustration and all. The resulting demo had exactly the unhinged immediacy the song needed. So when it came time to record properly, they made one very deliberate call: keep the iPad recording.

“When we went to record the track, we actually used that original iPad recording because it had this great kind of immediacy to it that was impossible to replicate. Then Conor came in and did his thing with the bass, and that was basically it.” — Jocelyn Vance

That’s the whole track. A lo-fi guitar loop, a bass line, and a vocalist screaming his way through a chaotic headspace. It shouldn’t work as well as it does — and yet here we are.

The EP itself was written in real time while Conor’s cancer diagnosis unfolded around them. In a further development that underscores just how high the stakes have been, Conor has recently been called to Belgium on short notice for emergency pioneering surgery that could remove the majority of his cancer — a procedure that wouldn’t have been possible for his case just four years ago. The Irish music community rallied hard, with a GoFundMe for Conor and his young family raising over €100K.

‘DIVIL I’ is three songs — Thanks A Million, ORANGUTAN, and closing track Chewing Gum — written by people who needed them as much as anyone who’d ever listen. Out now.

DIVIL I — Tracklist

1. Thanks A Million
2. ORANGUTAN
3. Chewing Gum