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.
Anna Mieke
For A Time
After the recent single ‘Twin’ from Anna Mieke, ‘For A Time’ finds the Wicklow singer-songwriter bringing a depth to her songcraft not present before, with a Nick Drake-esque arrangement that undulates wonderfully over four minutes.
The song is from Anna Mieke’s second album Theatre, due to be released on November 18th on Nettwerk. The video featuring a “disco yeti” is directed by Louise Gaffney of Dirty Dreamer and a visual artist in her own right.
“It’s a song of humid heat, burning summer, a pool. Rotting fruit, flies, the density of a greenhouse in August, carpeted stairs, a diving board. But also loss, and that feeling of fading and forgetting, of passing on. It reflects that feeling of nostalgia for a time you never actually experienced, or a person you never had the chance to meet, but feel you know well.
Anna Mieke is supporting Anaïs Mitchell on tour this month,
AUG 29 – Live At St. Luke’s Cork, Ireland
AUG 30 – Pepper Canister Church Dublin, Ireland
AUG 31 – Philharmonic Music Hall Liverpool, UK
SEP 1 – Brudenell Social Club Leeds, UK
2.
Talos
Farewell / Kamikaze
Eoin French today has released his third song of the year, ahead of the release of the new Talos album Dear Chaos on October 7th on BMG.
‘Farewell/Kamikaze’ is a serene elegaic song co-written with producer/songwriter SOHN. It comes with a video, by Niall O’Brien shot in West Cork that serves as “the last chapter in a narrative trilogy about grief, isolation and love.”
“The song’s title sums it up – it is about letting go or saying goodbye and the varying ways in which we do so. In the best instances of separating, the action comes from a place of calm or formality: a farewell. On the flip side there are times when these goodbyes feel absolutely eradicating and explosive. Not only do they wipe out a relationship but they erase the ideas you may have had of what that person or thing was. This song was an outpouring and was written with a friend of mine, SOHN.”
TALOS LIVE DATES
Oct 13: St Pancras Old Church, London (sold out)
Oct 14: Pepper Canister, Dublin
(sold out)
Oct 15: Live at St Luke’s, Cork
(sold out)
More from Talos.
3.
Sean Carpio
Floating Mountain (feat. Aoife Nessa Frances & Robert Stillman)
The Dublin multi-instrumentalist Sean Carpio recently released a vinyl-only album Waves of a Present on Ten Spot Records, a record that is launched on Saturday at the Fumbally Stables.
Carpio here brings in the vocals of Aoife Nessa Frances and the bass clarinet playing of Robert Stillman, for a somnambulist shimmering summer song inspired by “the rhythm of the Peruvian Marinera folk dance” and visions of a”mountain range on a visit to Arequipa”,
Floating Mountain became a study of the power of perspective,” says Carpio.
4.
Just Wondering
Just My Luck
Dublin trio Just Wondering are establishing their sound that draws from alt-pop, hip-hop and electronic textures with an ultra-focus on melody, as heard on latest track ‘Just My Luck’.
The band’s live dates are as follows.
2022 TOUR DATES
26-28 August – Reading + Leeds
3 September – Electric Picnic
19 October – Whelans, Dublin
20 October – Winthrop Avenue, Cork
22 October – Voodoo, Belfast
Just Wondering are Wale Akande, Jack O’Shaughnessy and Adam Redmond
“’Just My Luck’ begins from the perspective of a friend who was selfish and blames everything on anything but himself. It’s about excuses: getting unlucky, your friends being no use etc. – then the final joke is them asking someone to give you all their cash, as the ultimate ‘I’ll rinse you for what you’re worth’ – the lyrics are basically from the mind of an asshole. At other moments the perspective completely shifts – there are lines about loving someone, and other bits about how annoying it is when someone won’t stop calling and texting you when you’re clearly busy. It’s eclectic, it’s not one story, it never is – there’s three of us and we all have individual experiences. It’s from a time where collectively we were either falling out with mates, in love with someone, or sick of our phones”
5.
Neolithic, Jeorge II
Mine
A fine R&B funk jam from Neolithic (formerly of Nobody’s Heroes) with a verse from Jeorge II.
6.
The Flavours
Race to the Heart
The Flavours are a Cork band whose sound draws from funk, soul and indie and I dig singer Ella Compton’s vocals on this pretty ditty ‘Race To The Heart’ which has an old-fashioned appeal.
The band play Cyprus Avenue on August 19th.
7.
Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies
For What
Limerick alternative artist Post Punk Podge and band follow up ‘The Living Wake’, a song about “Irish emigration, and its effect on the Irish psyche,” with ‘For What’, is about the wider world and the discourse around it.
The song is on Bandcamp.
8
BKLAVA
Anywhere With You
Irish-Lebanese and Brighton-based DJ, producer, vocalist (and recent cover star of this column) Bklava dropped a big vocal room shaker last Friday. ‘Anywhere With You’ is a big pop vocal cut with big dance and rhythmic dynamics.
9.
Jack Madden
Hairspray
Dublin pop wannabe Jack Madden is channelling funk-pop and a firm hold on ‘Hairspray’, a track from a full-length entitled Madden that came out in 2021.
The stylish video for the track is by Louis Maxwell of Gracepark Productions.
10.
POSER
If U Love me
Lofi house producer Adam Kelly aka Poser follows up his track ‘I Hope U Think Of Me’, with this equally affecting track.
The sample vocals are from Brownstone’s R&B song of the same name.
“‘I originally heard the vocals in one of my favourite Ross from Friends tracks, ‘Crimson’, and knew I had to rework them in my own way’”
11.
Cormorant Tree Oh
Thirty Deer Heads
Irish multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Mary Keane aka Cormorant Tree Oh is releasing her second album Swoontide on the Trapped Animal label this September, the same label that gave us releases from Maija Sofia and Emma Houton.
Keane’s music is more of a challenging listen – weaving psychedelic folk with alternating dirge-like instrumentation, and overlapping vocals with balalaika, a Bouzouki-style instrument.
“This song is a celebration of the form and symbolism of caves. They are portals to another realm, the site of our earliest artistic expression, places of transcendence, the hermit’s refuge. They are colossal gees in the landscape. They are where picnicking lovers go to make mischief on a summer’s day. The cave in question is located in Portrane Co.Dublin.”
Swoontide is being described as a folk horror album.
“I love to stitch in samples from nature as so many of my songs are inspired in some way by the natural world. I’m also drawn to more domestic sounds like my mother’s washing machine or water coming to the boil. I play some unusual instruments throughout the album including balalaika, theremin, psaltery and lots of improvised percussion including bread bins, biscuit tins, stones, and a spiral staircase.”
Mary Keane
12.
Two Door Cinema Club
Lucky
Bangor success story Two Door Cinema Club have announced their new album Keep On Smiling on November 4th, and ‘Lucky’ is giving us a cross-section of sound from their career to date from their indie beginnings to the electronic-pop of their later years.
The album was written and produced by the band both during and coming out of lockdown, with additional production from Jacknife Lee (Bloc Party, The Killers, Taylor Swift) and Dan Grech Marguerat(Halsey, Lana Del Rey, George Ezra).
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, hit up the Irish section for individual track features
For this and more Irish songs, follow the Nialler9 New Irish Spotify playlist.
