Dublin alt-rock heavy-hitters THUMPER have returned have announced their forthcoming second album Sleeping With The Light On, the follow-up to their Choice Music Prize–nominated debut Delusions of Grandeur, and marked the occasion with the release of ‘Middle Management’: a sprawling, slow-burning, 10-minute voyage through kaleidoscopic fuzz and existential frustration. They’ve also confirmed a short run of new tour dates for February 2026.
‘Middle Management’ is THUMPER at their most expansive—an unhurried surge of riff-driven noise that grows and mutates with hypnotic precision. What begins as psych-pop swagger quickly cracks open into something more avant-leaning: a rising storm of guitars, atmospheric textures, and urgent vocals that spiral into a feverish refrain. The track ultimately dissolves into a psychedelic comedown of distant harmonies and shimmering ambience, showcasing a band pushing the boundaries of their own maximalist sound.
Frontman Oisín Furlong Leahy says the song nearly didn’t exist at all.
“‘Middle Management’ is a song that we attempted to write and repeatedly scrapped for years,” he explains. “The first demo dates back to well before the first album, and there were probably 10 versions since then. During COVID, as we knuckled down with this new body of work, the song re-emerged and we very gradually hammered it into shape, condensing years of ideas into something cohesive.”
“The song itself is an outlier on the album,” Leahy continues. “Every other song comes in at around the four-minute mark, but Middle Management is a clean 10 minutes long. The vocal hook—‘I thought that I could change, I thought that you could too’—repeats into abstraction, until it becomes unclear if the narrator has any intention of changing at all. In addition to the walls of guitars, vocal harmonies and propulsive krautrock drums, the track also features our co-producer Rian Trench on synth and piano—the first time a THUMPER song has featured anyone outside the six core members.”
The single arrives as the band enter a new chapter following a whirlwind few years. Since 2021, THUMPER have evolved from local underdogs to one of Ireland’s most vital live forces, grinding their way through relentless touring across Ireland, the UK, and Europe. They’ve become festival fixtures at home—Electric Picnic, All Together Now, Indiependence, Other Voices—and abroad, taking on major stages at Mad Cool, Reading & Leeds, Iceland Airwaves, Haldern Pop, Rock for People, Eurosonic, Reeperbahn, and more.
Their debut album Delusions of Grandeur earned widespread acclaim, ultimately securing a nomination for Irish Album of the Year at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize. With Sleeping With The Light On, THUMPER look ready to cement their status as one of Ireland’s most uncompromising and inventive guitar bands. If ‘Middle Management’ is any indication, their second act will more than deliver on their boundless potential.
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