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DIVIL is a band born of shared grief and turmoil. Their friendship, and their formation, is a beautiful story of family persevering. With “Thanks A Million”, they begin the process of working through that pain.
Made up of childhood friends Danny Dempsey McMahon (vocals), Jocelyn Vance (guitar), and Conor Cusack (bass), the Irish band came together when its members reconnected for the first time in over a decade. “Conor reached out to me a month or two after my dad’s funeral to reconnect and make music,” Dempsey McMahon explains. “He’d seen me and Jocelyn play at the service. Conor had a lot of shit going on with his [cancer] diagnosis, and he thought we may have been in a similar headspace.”
“The three of us were very close growing up,” says Cusack. “When you know each other from the age of four, and you went to the same schools, it’s closer to family,” Dempsey McMahon adds. “We’re very lucky that we can all speak to each other very straightforwardly, and that really helps with songwriting too”.
The trio spent their twenties playing in bands together. Having moved to London to work in management, Cusack had transitioned into the more administrative side of the music industry. “I had always wanted to be in a band with the guys, but getting sucked into the industry, I was focused on a different side of things,” Cusack admits. “Then my insecurities around my own creative abilities, I didn’t necessarily feel like I had the capacity. But seeing the guys play at the funeral, I remember thinking that it would be really nice to work together.”
Living with and caring for his father in his final years, Dempsey McMahon was given an extended leave of absence from work. He used his time throwing together concepts and ideas on GarageBand, trying to work through the loss of someone who was not only his father, but one of his closest friends. “I had to make music that was raw, cathartic, painful, and full of grief. I had to take pressure out of the tires, really, and music was my outlet. I see those three months in the house as therapy, but also as physical training to get ready to go into the studio with the guys, and make sure I’m ready, creatively, to give my best.”
“Thanks A Million” tells the story of not only grief, but of self-destruction; finding yourself falling into familiar patterns of obliteration and ruin. When the band got into the studio, they found that Dempsey McMahon had a knack for writing hooks, which he’d presume were only worthy of the verse. “I listen to a lot of hip-hop, so i was used to repetitive rhythm,” he notes. Cusack sat down with his bandmate, sorting through his ideas and working through a traditional verse chorus structure, all built around the bass line.
Once the track was ready to roll, DIVIL set about recording a music video. Directed by close friend Aoife Leonard, and recorded in the band’s old school Mount Temple, alumni including U2, Gilla Band, and Damian Dempsey, the filming process offered another sense of stepping back in time and reaching through own histories. “It was weirdly poignant to be back in school,” says McDempsey Mahon. “There’s a line in the song, ‘Thank the lord for friends / I want to feel like I’m in school again,’ and to be back, it was amazing. I think it worked perfectly, the fact we all had really intimate relationships with the spaces we were in. It’s melancholic. It was great, it was a really special experience.”
English (US) · 