A lot music from Ireland and Northern Ireland comes Nialler9’s way and every week, we listen through it all and select the tracks from emerging artists (and some established acts) that deserve to be heard by you.
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, follow our Spotify playlist or hit up the Irish section for individual track features.
1.
New Pagans
Find Fault With Me
Belfast band New Pagans‘ latest song is among their best yet. ‘Find Fault With Me’ is inspired by the experiences of the last two years but not in way that would make you run a mile from this pleasingly melodic rock tune.
“It feels like lots of people have had a really hard time over the last few years, dealing with various forms of personal stress and collective aggravation. This song is about checking in with each other and recognising when someone around you needs support. Although the song emerges with a heavy heart, it concludes with a chorus of elevated voices [singing] ‘I’ve got you’ and New Pagans has always been about more than just the music, it’s about building a community who look out for each other and take action when they need to.”
Singer Lyndsey McDougall
Catch them live in December the 9th @ Academy 2, Dublin and the 16th @ Limelight 2, Belfast.
2.
Blooms
Text Me When You Come Home
Louise Cunnane’s Blooms project is back with a new song that came about as a reaction to the overbearing culture of male harassment of women in public and concern for their safety.
I wrote the song as a reaction to the Sarah Everard story. I lived in London. I walked through parks on my own to get home. I have been that girl. We have all been that girl but the outcome of her story broke my heart. There’s definitely a sadness to the song. We all want the people we care about to let us know that they’re safe, to let us know they got home ok. It should be so simple but it’s not.
Blooms’ new track highlights the hard-hitting reality of all the actions that women and girls feel they must take themselves to try and stay safe in a culture of male harassment and violence against them. The murder of Sarah Everard and more recently Sabina Ness appalled the whole nation and ignited protests and calls for reform in a society where women are told to change their behaviour instead of the men committing the assaults.
A new Blooms’ next EP is coming in early 2022.
3.
Sive
Winter
Kildare singer-songwriter Sive embraces the seasonal with ‘Winter’ from a forthcoming 2022 album. The song brandishes a celestial folk style in its arrangement that builds with crashing drums anchored by Sive’s magnetic vocals. It’s released on Veta Music.
It follows on from ‘Think Before I Speak’, which will also feature on the album.
‘Winter’ is a song about impermanence, and takes inspiration from the cyclical quality of the natural world. It traces an internal struggle to accept the constant changing and inevitable end of all things. Ultimately, it is a declaration of the preciousness of life, a look at how it is often in the vulnerable depths of winter that we can see more clearly and learn to trust that the light will come again”
Sive
4.
EMR
Earl Grey in October
The latest track from songwriter EMR delves back into the singer-songwriter folk arrangements of her early work, while looking forward to a literal move to Canada next year, and a release of a collection of music called Tales from the Rabbit Hole soon too.
“Taking up a job in sound-design over lockdown has really helped me to experiment with style and audio more. With the high-polished standard for music these days, I was almost afraid of noise and I always wanted things to be squeaky clean, perhaps resulting in missing out on character. I released ”want to want” where I recorded a bunch of rain through my window and decided to just go nuts audio-wise, and the response has been great so I’m excited to incorporate this new mentality into my projects going forward. I don’t’ want to fear noise anymore – I want to love it!”
5.
Róg Poets
Karpackie Pt. 2
Dublin-based rap group Róg Poets who are Mory, Smokey, Bazigos and Johnny Welfare are pit here extolling the virtues of cheap beer on this Smokey-produced track from their forthcoming album Two Sides of the Same Coin out this month. It’s Part 2 to the part 1 of the song on their 2018 EP.
6.
Pastiche
Bad Loser
Dublin 23-year-old pop artist Pastiche’s latest song ‘Bad Loser’ is a Billie Eilish-esque pop-swerving track with a creeping beat. Pastiche has a sold out gig in Whelan’s on Friday.
“Lyrically, ‘Bad Loser’ is about your inner demons and, in a way, celebrating them. It reads like a diary entry and It’s all very much drawn from personal experiences that I’ve had with my own mental health. I like to turn things on their head, turn negatives into positives as much as I can, so with this song I delved pretty deep inside my own head and looked at some of the stronger parts of my personality. It’s really me putting that on a plate and saying, ‘these things aren’t bad aspects of me; they’re just aspects of me.’ I think that’s a pretty important conversation to have.”
Pastiche
7.
Molijah
Going
Lucy Shah is the name behind the solo project Molijah, and ‘Going’ is the debut track, a song that is a little R&B, a little hip-hop and a little pop. The song from the Tallaght artist was produced by Ois, and inspired by a chance meeting while her mother was ill.
“I was going through a very difficult time, and had decided that any kind of romance was off the cards for the time being. And then I saw her in the George…”
8.
Darkroom Data
Fall With You
Irish vocalist Gillian NoVa and Brazilian composer Márcio Paz aka Darkroom Data follow up their recent May single, with the brooding electro-pop of ‘Fall With You’.
9.
Captain Moonlight
A Brief History Of Leo-Liberalism
Kilkenny MC Captain Moonlight is back and has some things to say about Leo Varadkar’s political policies and apparent love of landlords, over a beat that is as close to Run The Jewels as the Irish rapper has come.
Moonlight also released ‘Lords Of The Land’ this week.
10.
Yawa
Push Your Luck
I’m really enjoying the bright polychromatic tones of new Dublin duo Yawa, as previously featured here. ‘PushYourLuck’ is a breezy funk pop jam about navigating a breakup.
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, follow our Spotify playlist or hit up the Irish section for individual track features.
