Featuring Caleb Kunle, Monjola, His Father’s Voice, Morgana, Sorcha Richardson, Holly Munro, The PVP, Arms That Fit Like Legs, Roisin McKeown, Oh Boland.
A lot of Irish music comes our way and every week, we listen through it all, sift the list down to a manageable list and share the best new tracks from emerging artists and some more 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.
Caleb Kunle
Power
Nialler9 recently put the London-based Irish-raised Nigerian artist Caleb Kunle up for Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition where he placed as a runnerup from acts across the UK and Ireland, and is now playing the festival.
The artist’s latest single ‘Power’ is a call to arms for using your voice and make change, with the song’s triumphant production in the vein of Jungle or Michael Kiwankuka.
The song was inspired by the action of Nigerian youth during the SARS Epidemic in 2020.
In his own words “Being a diasporic Nigerian, I felt a deep sense of helplessness in being unable to lend my strength in person and this frustration led to inspiration, creating a song about the indomitable force that we are when we realise our unique strength as people to unite.”
Monjola
Go Wrong
Dublin-based Monjola releases the 8-track It’s Not That Deep EP on June 14th, and dropped this suave sonic earworm from it recently, produced by his brother MOIO.
It’s a journey through the labyrinth of past relationships, where the corridors echo with haunting whispers of regret. The song is about reflecting on past relationships, thinking about things that you might have done wrong, and situations you wish you could revisit. While revisiting these feelings, it’s also about finding a sense of peace, knowing you can’t change the past and that you need to focus on yourself. It’s not that deep.
The track is released on via Chamomile Club, who are putting on a big secret location party in Dublin on July 27th.
His Father’s Voice
Forgot To Feed
The Limerick new wave four-piece His Father’s Voice dropped this shiny Beach House-esque track with the standout vocals of Ash O’Connor. The band’s best work yet, and follows on from ‘Arm’s Length’ in April.
You may be familiar with the band from Féile na Gréine’s award-nominated documentary Out of Place.
| “This song came about around the time that I was listening to a lot of Bessie Smith and Ella Fitzerald. I’d like to think there’s glimpses of that showing through across certain vocal lines, I don’t think I would have made those creative decisions had I been in my usual shoegaze listening rut. Forgot to Feed originally began with quite dark shoegaze guitars, but as the crooning vocals began to achieve the dejected delivery I was looking for, the instrumental brightened and provided a well needed dream-like contrast.” |
Sorcha Richardson, Morgana
Naked And Swimming
A meeting of two of Ireland’s keenest songwriters and music minds with Richardson and the solo project of Morgana (Saint Sister), marking a delicately spun song that is the first single release from the latter artist.
Video: Morgana on being a solo artist in at Other Voices in Dingle
Holly Munro
New Years Moon
A melodic indie-pop wonder from Dublin singer-songwriter Holly Munro’s forthcoming EP A Crescendo Ending to be released June 20th on Kartel Music Group.
Oh Boland
Grass Walls
The opening track from the third album Western Leisure from the Galway garage-rock and power-pop band is ‘Grass Walls’, a slightly-groovy guitar jam that recalls White Denim at their fizziest.
The PVP
Track 94
The Limerick band The PVP feature former members of Bleeding Heart Pigeons, Cruiser and hallo gain, His Father’s Voice.
The project was kicked off when Chris Quigley started making music inspired by the fabled Kevin Shields’ Drum and Bass record.
Of course, the end result is nothing of the sort but there is some frenetic drums and shoegaze, alongside Suicide, Stereolab and Sonic Youth references on the resulting album.
‘Track 94’ is one that stood out to me – drawing on psychedelic rock, ’80s rock sounds and atmospheric guitar band jams.
The band play gigs in the next week in Ireland:
June 7th: Toales, Dundalk w/ Danny Carrol
June 14th: Roisin Dubh, Galway
Róisín McKeown
What You Do
The New York/Dublin songwriter Róisín McKeown released a debut EP in May called All My Love, and you can detect the influence of folk, R&B, jazz and blues in the EP, most notably on the song ‘What You Do’.
The EP was worked on between Dublin and New York, but mostly in Brooklyn with Mckeown’s band.
“This project is all to do with first love; a time capsule of my slightly younger self…”
Arms That Fit Like Legs
‘For The Time Being’
Arms That Fit Like Legs are a Dublin-based instrumental trio who have been around a while (featured here in 2018), who draw from post-jazz and electronic textures in their music.
‘For The Time Being’ is track two on their latest EP Rotation (Bandcamp), which was recorded in St. John’s Church in Kill, Co. Kildare, where you can see the band play the song live in the accompanying video.
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.
New additions not featured above:
- Papa Romeo – Chicken Town
- Niamh Regan; SOAK – Record
- Negro Impacto – FANGIRL
- Lankum – The Rocky Road to Dublin – Edit
- chameleon – I Never Knew You Well
- Maria Kelly – Drive
- Lil Skag; Curtisy – Usually
- Sal Dulu; Fly Anakin – Neri Eyes
- of all living things – My Call
- Saoirse Miller – Limerence
- James Vincent McMorrow – Things we tell ourselves
- Ro Yourell – Freedom
- bog band – Back To You
- a lazarus soul – Black Maria – Single Edit
- EHCO – Relief
- KhakiKid; Joe Butler – Suckin’ Diesel
- MathMan – Full Throttle
- Big Sleep – Daisy
- Olivia Emade – Imagine
- Guud Grief – Come Shine
- K3lu; Son of Nowhere – Still The Voices Come
- Graham; hikii; Becky McNeice – Falling
- Soulé – Nobu
- GNS – DONT MATTER
- Coolgirl – Road Closures
- Banba – Blue
