How do you write a song about the black humour in Irish drinking culture without sounding preachy or condescending?
On Ablutions, Harry Fennell’s new single – his first for new Dublin-based independent artist development label Rubarb Music released on 30 April – he sings about love, loss and the amusing irony that goes hand-in-hand with drinking your feelings away. It’s all wrapped up in a package of whimsical lyrics, his trademark quivering vocal thrum and a rollicking folk-pop chorus.
Ablutions is not exactly intended as a cautionary tale, but paints a stark picture – whether it’s via first-hand experience, or witnessing “the man glued to his chair” in a corner of a pub, ordering two drinks at a time for his absent friend – of how drinking often tends to be romanticised.
The song was partly inspired by the 24-year-old’s own relationship with alcohol, when he observed how he and his peers reacted to news of a loss by “heading straight to the pub”. After losing a friend who was “a massive drinker” to suicide several years ago, he realised that their immediate inclination to raise a glass to them was jarring, in all senses of the word.
“So I’m kind of singing for the person who might be going through that for the first time, or the second time, or it might be their best mate,” says Fennell. “In a way, these are natural reactions – to not realise that you’re actually numbing yourself with ‘the craic’. It’s a bit dark, but it’s important to talk about, too.“
As penetrating a topic as the subject matter might be, like all Fennell’s songs, there is an element of lightheartedness to both his lyrics and the music. One line cleverly references whiskey by saying “James and I sit in the sun, and soak our skin til evening / He’s calling me to get some sleep, but closing time is up to me”. The line “Ablutions take me by surprise / I absolutely have a habit of forgetting to realise” illustrates how abusing alcohol can often have a negative impact on your self-esteem.
“And of course, because ablutions means washing yourself, you’re almost washing away your emotions,” he says. “But I’m not saying that I’m now so self-aware that this isn’t gonna happen again; this is just what we do. Some people put their hand in the fire and burn themselves, and say ‘Alright, I’m not gonna do that again’, but others just kid themselves. There’s something about that that’s fascinating.”
Fennell thrives on digging into the human psyche in his writing, but his musical influences are perhaps more clear-cut. There are elements of The Divine Comedy, a band that he loves, in the song’s production; the female backing vocalists pointedly harken back to 1960s-era Leonard Cohen, while other influences include Father John Misty, Shakey Graves and bluegrass musician Doc Watson.
“It’s very easy to make a song sound nice, but what I wanted was to say ‘Let’s also make it sound completely different’,” he nods. “So with the ‘spaghetti western’ guitar, the Leonard Cohen backing vocalists and there’s Cuban piano in there, too; there’s a way of gluing all those parts together and making something sound a bit unique.”
It’s undoubtedly a hugely impressive calling card from a songwriter who isn’t afraid to tackle the big topics in his music. “I think it’s a very Irish thing to go ‘This is a drinking song’, or ‘This is a working song’,” he admits. “I wanted to write a drinking song, but not a bad one. I don’t think it’s coming from a place of moral high ground, but it’s a different take on it, I suppose. The song is for the person that may have gone through that with a friend, or maybe someone who realises that they’re maybe not dealing with it themselves. It’s saying ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
