Irish Rock ‘n’ Roll Unit The Donnys Release New Single, “The Mailing List”
Their first single since 2024’s “whirling dervish” of an album ‘Get Active’, the band are straight back to action with new single, “The Mailing List”.
Coming in at a trim 3 and a half minutes, The Donnys waste no time in dialling up the energy, using up the visceral energy stored up over the winter. Based around a 12 bar blues progression, the song is quite the hypnotic one, with a flurry of over driven guitars and frenzied drums and bass. On the song’s lyrical process, Oisín from the band explains:
“The lyrics came from an old notebook I had from when I was 14 or 15 and from what I can remember it’s about feeling like I was always screwing up in a relationship I was in around that time. Although looking back now I wasn’t doing anything at all.”
While the band wear some of their historic influences proudly - the aforementioned MC5, Stooges, Deadboys and Thin Lizzy - they also look closer to home for inspiration, in bands such as New Pagans and Adore. The theme of keeping it local runs to the artwork, which is based off a two pence Irish stamp. The short promo video for the track, uses clips from a 1975 Newsround broadcast, which features a west Cork postman by the name of Mike Sheehan, who at that time still completed his 30 mile delivery route by bicycle, despite his two colleagues having switched to motorbike and motorcar.
In true garage rock style, the band also kept it DIY when it came to the recording process, invading Oisín’s house in Kilkenny and running cable from room to room to allow the band to capture the track live, while eliminating bleed. The band felt it was important to capture the energy and feeling of the track, decidedly eschewing a click track or gridding the performance out on Protools. The result - “an adrenaline fuelled three minutes of pure expression by means of garage rock”.