My recommended best long playing albums and records of the last month. This is what I listened to and loved the most.
Album of the month:
David Kitt – The Big Romance (Kittser’s Version) (Allchival)
One of the great Irish albums of the century so far, The Big Romance turned 25 this year. Kitt’s second album was originally released on V2 Records in 2001 and his first time working in a professional studio, was recorded at Pulse Studios off Camden Street in Dublin with producer Ken McHugh and sold 60,000 copies in Ireland alone. For the 10th and 20th anniversaries, Kitt approached the label about a reissue and got nowhere. The rights remain with Warner, under a contract that grants the label ownership of the master recordings for, as contracts sometimes state “the universe forever.” So for the 25th, he did what Taylor Swift did: recorded the whole album again from scratch at his home studio in Ballinskelligs, with the invaluable help of McHugh, drawing on 25 years of experience with synths and samplers.
The new version features all ten original tracks, three new songs, and the B-side and fan favourite ‘Saturdays’. Tracks on the original included ‘Song From Hope St. (Brooklyn, NY)’, ‘You Know What I Want To Know’, ‘Step Outside in the Morning Light’, ‘Strange Light in the Evening’, ‘What I Ask’ – a fusion of acoustic and electric instrumentation with underground electronica and hip-hop references that was, Kitt says, “pretty fresh for the time.”
As he did recently over two nights live at National Concert Hall, the new version imbues this old album with fresh energy and new songs that sit well alongside the older material, a classic Irish album given its flowers by the original author with 25 more years of experience in the tank.
Nine Inch Noize – Nine Inch Noize (The Null Corporation/Boysnoize Records)
What started as a film score connection became a live experiment became one of Coachella 2026’s defining moments. The seeds were planted when Boys Noize (Alexander Ridha, German-Iraqi DJ and producer) turned Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Challengers score into a continuous dance remix, then contributed additional production to Tron: Ares. From there, Reznor invited Ridha to join Nine Inch Nails on a second stage during the Peel It Back tour – a small platform in the middle of the crowd, delivering electronic reworks of NIN material while the main set played around them. The chemistry proved undeniable. “The creative fulfillment of working on the Challengers and TRON scores with Boys Noize led me to think that including him in the Peel It Back tour could be an interesting way to express NIN in more purely electronic terms,” Reznor explains. “The result was so much fun for us we felt it was worth expanding and formalising in some way.”
On a whim, Reznor proposed a full set as Nine Inch Noize in Coachella’s Sahara tent. With Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandig – singer of How to Destroy Angels – completing the live lineup, the Weekend One set has been mentioned more than once as one of the festival’s greatest performances in memory. The album, recorded across studios, hotels, planes and live settings, mirrors that setlist in track order. 12 reimaginings: ‘Vessel’, ‘She’s Gone Away’, ‘Heresy’, ‘Copy Of A’, ‘Me I’m Not’, ‘Closer’, ‘Came Back Haunted’, ‘As Alive As You Need Me To Be’ from Tron: Ares; plus a cover of How to Destroy Angels’ ‘Parasite’ and Soft Cell’s ‘Memorabilia’. Released as Halo 38 in the NIN numbering system.
Crying Loser – The Ick
They’re from Cork, they make abrasive, skronky, improvisational no-wave art rock post-punk, and they have just released their debut album The Ick.
There’s a particular kind of Irish band that exists almost entirely outside the usual structures. No polished press shots, no carefully worded statements about their influences, no radio-friendly anything. Crying Loser are one of those bands.
It was a relatively long time coming – Crying Loser’s debut single ‘Friends’ was legitimately the first exciting song of 2023 which was followed by the Oaf Milk EP later that year.
The Ick grew out of noisy basement improvisations in Cork, and the album retains the energy of something that could fall apart at any moment but somehow holds together through sheer force of momentum.
WU LYF – A Wave That Will Never Break (LYF Recordings)
This band have all the hallmarks of some bullshit but they are not. 15 years after Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, one of the more improbable and genuinely electric debut albums of the early 2010s, WU LYF return with their second record, produced by Sonic Boom and recorded at Lisbon’s Namouche Studios and in Wales in 2025. The album is not available on major streaming platforms.
“The vision for the L Y F has been with us since the start,” they write. “Way back in 2010, when we first sold the white on white bandana with the Heavy Pop / Concrete Gold 12-inch, we foresaw a community of like-minds that would gather around the flame of our music.”
The seven tracks carry the scale of a sermon delivered at full volume, music that feels physical, devotional and cathartic. Frontman Ellery Roberts back with the strangulated yarl intact, but the band are mellower and it’s just as glorious in their epic reach, particularly towards the album’s back half.
Available on vinyl and CD, but digitally only through the LYF subscription or Bandcamp.
Stephen Star – Newt
Little is known about this Dublin singer-songwriter Stephen Sorensen aka Stephen Star except he is part of the Mirrorworld label and Irish music community that also features Finn Carraher McDonald aka Nashpaints, Isaac Jones, and Henry Earnest, who all help out on the record along with guitar and backing vocals from Ellie O’Neill who had a debut album out last month too.
Newt is a collection of reflective and intimate Elliott Smith-style indie folk songwriter tracks.
Jessie Ware – Superbloom (Island/EMI)
The sixth studio album from the London singer-songwriter who cemented her place as one of the finest disco-pop artists around with What’s Your Pleasure? (2020) and That! Feels Good! (2023).
13 tracks, produced with James Ford, Barney Lister, Karma Kid, Jon Shave (Charli XCX) and Stuart Price (Madonna, Pet Shop Boys), mixed by Ben Baptie (Sault, Little Simz, Adele). Ware A&R’d the record herself, as she has done since What’s Your Pleasure?.
“Since What’s Your Pleasure? I’ve been trying out this fantasy world and escapism,” she explains. “While I love dance music, I wanted to dig deeper with this record – to connect with real relationships and appreciate the love I have, and the fears I have of losing it.” Lead single ‘I Could Get Used to This’ is a lush disco-R&B opener featuring her first-ever key change, co-written with Miranda Cooper and Jon Shave of Xenomania. ‘Ride’, ‘Automatic’ and the title track have followed. Grace Jones, Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand are cited as key touchstones.
Lone – Hyperphantasia (Greco-Roman)
First album in five years from Nottingham’s Matt Cutler, following 2021’s Always Inside Your Head. Lone describes it as “unhinged, unrestrained, self-indulgent bat-shit pop music from an alternate dimension. A beautiful, synthetic hall of mirrors head rush… Like taking every style I’ve worked with, amping them up to 11 and firing them off a cliff.” Hyperphantasia is defined as a condition characterised by exceptionally vivid and detailed mental imagery, and this is the album as that condition: house, rave, ambient and electronica pushed through into something that sounds like all of them at once.
The most significant shift from previous Lone records is the deepened relationship with vocals and guest collaborators: Greco-Roman affiliates Ell Murphy and Lou Hayter, Barcelona singer Bikôkô, Nottingham rapper Juga-Naut and London-via-Hong Kong artist Merry Lamb Lamb all appear. ‘Life Spark’ embraces early-’90s hardcore rave. ‘Big World’ features Lou Hayter. ‘Sickly, Sweetly, Summer Movie’ and ‘Ascension.png’ previewed the album’s range.
Cable Boy – Forever
The debut album from Dublin five-piece Cable Boy (Jason Aikhionbare, Fionn McLoughlin, Liam Murray, Semilore Olusa and Corneille Tshibasu) who have been building steadily since 2018. Forever was produced by the band with Adam Shanahan and David Tapley of Tandem Felix.
The album cements the band moving away from their earlier dreamy indie sound into a “goth disco” thing with fuzzy guitars, shoegaze, surf pop, power-pop, and jangle sounds.
Tour dates: Wavelength Cork (May 8th), Grand Social Dublin (May 15th), London Irish Centre (May 17th)
NO PHOTOS – Strand
Debut album from Dublin alt-pop three-piece NO PHOTOS who are vocalist Zach Okay, vocalist/guitarist Casper Ivy and producer Erik Konijn and who started out as a bigger band.
Strand is a “melancholic alt-pop album about losing friends and time passing by,” with nature-inspired sounds and dips to and alternative hip-hop and acoustic indie pop. It’s a much softer and gentler sound from the band’s early work – informed by those recent times, and changing from a six-piece to a three-piece in the process of making the album in a cabin Denmark.
This project, Strand, has been growing and transforming along with us, new songs were being written about what we were going through and old songs were gaining entirely new meanings. Over time this project started to become a physical, ever-changing part of us and a testament to this difficult time we went through as a group.” He adds, “getting the album finished and released has been the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been following for the past year.”
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
