In search of lost musical time

When Oisín Leahy Furlong stalks stages there are few lead singers that demand your attention as he does. With AWOL hair, tidy moustache, arms and legs in varying flailing states of gymnastic trickery, he fronts a propulsive engine stoked by five musicians that know where to draw the line between disorder and control.

The primary issue in the band’s music, he says, “is combatting being prepared and being wilfully unprepared”. The fundamental skirmish, he adds, is all about uniting carefully devised methods with barely considered instincts. This, he notes, is not only “where the magic happens” but also where “things never go completely off the rails”.

When Leahy Furlong is off stage and sitting down in a coffee shop in a retail shopping centre on Dublin’s northside, he is the direct opposite of the skulking figure he is perhaps most recognised as. A studious, reflective presence, he wouldn’t look out of place in a line-up of mild-mannered librarians hip to the work of Charlie Kaufman or Chuck Palahniuk. He considers each question thrown his way with equal parts courtesy and inquiry, his demeanour one of balanced engagement rather than that of a person emerging, shocked and blinking, from a bunker following two years of captivity.

Thumper have been around for some years as a guitar band when it wasn’t necessarily fashionable and certainly wasn’t profitable. Formed around the time when they were studying at Dublin-based music college BIMM, Leahy Furlong’s early solo efforts were jettisoned when he gelled with other like-minded musicians.

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College contemporaries such as Fontaines D.C. and The Murder Capital have since advanced under what some people have described as post-punk, but he rightly claims that Thumper don’t slot into that particular pigeonhole. Rather, he says, they fit neatly into a sizeable cultural shift that has taken place in Ireland over the past few years.

"We are less embarrassed in ourselves," he rationalises about Irish music acts, "less beholden to what the outer world thinks of us, and feature far less Americanisation in the music. The most obvious example is the first Fontaines D.C. album. The through-line from that to the likes of Kojaque, Lankum, Junior Brother and everyone in-between is that we are not fetishising Irishness but rather drawing on our own life, experiences and deep artistic culture."

'Thumper aren't aiming to sound like we're from Dublin or wearing our Irishness on our sleeves – a lot of influences on the new album are American bands'

The music hasn’t changed dramatically, he observes, but rather the public perception and the narrative around the presentation of the music. “Within that, Thumper aren’t aiming to sound like we’re from Dublin or wearing our Irishness on our sleeves – a lot of influences on the new album are American bands, but that doesn’t matter, because the point is we are what we are.”

Long time coming

The band’s debut album, Delusions of Grandeur, has, unavoidably, been a long time coming and as a statement of intent it does indeed present a definitive outline of what makes Thumper such a forceful rock band. It was, remarks Leahy Furlong, born in two worlds.

“It was written and conceived of in a world where we knew we were going to get to share the songs with people and then made at a time where, as a band, we weren’t even sure if we were going to survive or whether the record would come out.” Now out of the Covid bunker and raring to perform again, he says he doesn’t know how or what to feel because he hasn’t lived in that world (once his natural habitat) for so long. “I feel so removed from it, but I can only look forward to it. Insofar as we are all changed by what we have gone through in the past two years, I think people are eager to find something to align themselves with emotionally after having to do their own work on themselves.”

'I can't wait for that kind of communion to happen again,' he sighs, 'where we're in it together'

The communal nature of live performances is key to the Thumper experience, and while they pack a massed guitar and double-drum punch, it is the band’s location of sweet-spot melodies that sucks in the listener. Yes, you might well be beaten over the head with the potency of the music, but harmonies are never too far away. The result is gloriously head-spinning. “I can’t wait for that kind of communion to happen again,” he sighs, “where we’re in it together.”

We circle back to the alignment of chaos and control and how one glances off the other. It is, Leahy Furlong tells me, all about keeping boredom at arm’s length. “No good song is just one good idea, it’s a combination of lots of small, good ideas working together cohesively. Even if all those ideas ultimately are born out of chaos, it’s still a harmony of different approaches. I suppose some of the time it shouldn’t work but it does. It’s what people say about songwriting in that it’s a little bit of a mystery, some strange kind of higher power where you just snatch something out of thin air. Yet it’s also about practice, a muscle you have to work on.”

It is three years (“give or take a few months”) since the band recorded the first note of the songs that finally appear on the album. Before that, they were writing the songs for almost three years. “That’s about six years,” he says, a tad perplexed at how so many years could have passed while barely noticing.

“I’m 30 next year, and so it’s bit funny talking about what the songs mean to me any more because I’ve changed, as has everyone in that amount of time, and I suspect at this point in my life that I’m shifting and morphing.” The intention for Thumper, he adds, was always to be honest, no matter how many different ways emotions were articulated. One or more songs “might not be me now, but it was definitely a good reflection of what my mindset was back then, even if it was just one day.”

'You forget how much of your self-image, self-importance and self-worth are wrapped up in what you do'

Turning 30 next year doesn’t matter to him (“I prefer to go forward than backward”), but like many musicians and artists over the past two years, he rubs bruises and tends to scars. “It’s very difficult to not succumb to feeling like you were less than something because you were broke. You get to the point where you’d really like not to be [broke], and you’d really like to have something to show for it.”

‘Self-worth’

Thankfully, he states, he has plenty to show for it with the work, especially in the last two years, but much has been if not lost then temporarily confiscated. “You forget how much of your self-image, self-importance and self-worth are wrapped up in what you do, and when you can’t do it, or when that role no longer exists and someone asks how you are, what do you say to them?

“I didn’t know who the f**k I was over the past two years, so while I’m not anxious at turning 30, I am anxious to reclaim lost time. I’m also eager and excited to let the past be in the past and move on to the next chapter. Of course, this story is not unique to me, but it’s real. You talk in interviews about Covid and lockdowns and it can be boring, but in the interests of being true to yourself you just have to say it like it is.”

And that is? For a second or two, his cup trembling on the table, the mild librarian persona turns into the lead singer of Thumper. “It’s been a mad two years. I really don’t want to read this article six months down the line during another lockdown! I just can’t do it!”

Thumper play Collins Barracks, Dublin, as support to Damien Dempsey, March 18th. The album launch show takes place in The Grand Social, Dublin, March 19th.  Thumper play Sea Sessions 2022, Bundoran, County Donegal, June 17th-19th.