Irish alt-rock four-piece HAVVK return with their fourth album. Tierra Whack delivers a new conceptual record. Graham Coxon shares another solo album. Australian psych-rock collective Pond return. Slow Moving Clouds’ Kevin Murphy launches Rattling Ark with debut album and new Irish EPs land from DIVIL and THEATRE . A posthumous SOPHIE collaboration with bounce artist Big Freedia lands. Shamrock Showband bring the C+W ceilí border vibes on the AOTW
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums + EPs
Album of the week:
Shamrock Showband – Shankhill Road Mission
The second album from one of my recent favourite discoveries, Shamrock Showband, the Irish showband country and western-inspired music, which I introduced with “if Father Ted and CMAT had a baby”.
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The Belfast-based trio who make up Shamrock Showband are Conor McAuley, Jamie Bishop (aka MUCKNO), and Joel Harkin who hail from the border counties of Louth, Monaghan and Donegal respectively. They are a psychedelic country band built on a very specific kind of Irish sensibility.
It was the sublime earworm of ‘My Wee Car’ the song that opened up the Shamrock Showband portal for me and Shankhill Road Mission continues the band’s weirdo sham pop vibe whether its old-timey hoedowns about Cromwell and making your way to Castleblaney, lo-fi Cindy Lee-esque jams about fascists, interludes from the border town life that inspired the band and pedal-steel ditties about the Rory Gallagher statue in Ballyshannon in Donegal.
Shankhill Road Mission is filled with Bandcamp-adjacent country and western indie border music in spades.
This album is inspired by Belfast, Ulster, The Border, and the towns we come from.This album is inspired by the Showband Era, a sexier era than it gets credit for. An era that was cut short by the Brits and their war on Ireland because of it’s ability to bring people from different communities together.
HAVVK – Time Will Kill
The fourth album from Irish alt-rock duo HAVVK, Julie Hawk and Matt Harris, who have spent the better part of a decade building one of the most singular grungy guitar sounds in Irish music. Their previous albums have moved between weighty, riff-led intensity and stripped-back vulnerability, and from the early singles Time Will Kill looks set to push deeper in both directions at once.
Time Will Kill is the kind of fourth album that sounds like a band growing fully into the noise they have been carrying for years.
We wanted to make something that addressed the feeling we both had that time is always running out”, members Julie Hough and Matt Harris explain. “Whether it is small trivial tasks that you don’t have time to finish, things you are passionate about that you don’t have time to fully explore, or things you see in the world that you want to try to help with but can’t find a way to prioritise to the point you feel like you are making a difference.”
“There’s so much that feels like it is going backwards in the world at the moment both close to home, with nationalistic movements in Ireland and the UK but also one global geopolitical crisis after the other. We have both felt a sense of guilt putting time into our personal interests while all of this is going on. These tracks are about working through that feeling in different ways; pausing and asking yourself, how are you actually using that time, whose pockets are you lining, and who are you actually looking out for?”
Tierra Whack – WHACK’S MUSEUM
The new album from the Philadelphia rapper, the follow-up to 2024’s World Wide Whack. Tierra Whack has been one of the most genuinely original voices in rap since her 2018 mini-album Whack World, building a body of work as concerned with visual concept and short-form playfulness as it is with bars. WHACK’S MUSEUM arrives as another quietly ambitious mixtape statement from an artist who refuses to play the conventional rap-album game.
Rattling Ark – Top of a Mountain
The debut album from Rattling Ark, the Irish alternative trad/folk/experimental project led by Slow Moving Clouds’ Kevin Murphy with Thomas Haugh, Lizzi Murtough and Aki.
The singles ‘Coleraine Jig’ and ‘Three Lovely Lassies from Bannion’ have been the ahead-of-album signposts for a project that treats Irish tradition as a starting point rather than a destination, pulling improvised textures and contemporary chamber-folk dynamics into the conversation with the through point of Pentangle, The Haxan Cloak and The Gloaming. On first listen, it sounds like a wonderful addition to the Irish album list this year.
The album launches tonight at Bello Bar in Dublin with A Clatter & Drone as guests.
- June 19 – BelloBar, Dublin
- July 23 – University College Cork
- January 23 (2027) – Seamus Ennis Arts Centre, Dublin
Styrofoam Winos – Any River
The new album from the Nashville indie-folk trio Styrofoam Winos, the project of Trevor Nikrant, Lou Turner and Joe Kenkel, each of whom maintains their own solo catalogue alongside this collective.
Their close-harmony songwriting carries clear echoes of the current axis of contemporary American folk and jangle indie, with the bonus chemistry of a band where three songwriters trade lead duties throughout. All three members have played in the Roadhouse Band with Ryan Davis and Will Oldham – Bonnie “Prince” Billy and MJ Lenderman are fans.
Big Freedia & SOPHIE – Released At Last EP
An extraordinary posthumous collaboration: the late, ground-breaking Glaswegian producer SOPHIE, who died in 2021, with New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia. The pairing was always going to be electric in theory, and the fact that this material finally arrives is a real moment for fans of both artists. A glimpse of what SOPHIE was working on in her last years, and another reminder of just how singular a producer she was.
Alex Zhang Hungtai – Orion/Mother
The new album from the experimental composer and former Dirty Beaches mainman Alex Zhang Hungtai, who has spent the years since that project’s wind-down building one of the more committedly searching solo catalogues in adventurous music, taking in saxophone, modular synth, ambient drift and noise. Orion/Mother arrives as another patiently assembled record.
DIVIL – DIVIL I EP
Divil are Danny Dempsey McMahon (vocals), Jocelyn Vance (guitar) and Conor Cusack (bass) – childhood friends who reconnected under difficult circumstances. Having lost touch for nearly a decade, the three came together again on the night of Danny’s father’s funeral, where Conor witnessed Danny and Jocelyn perform ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ for close friends and family. Shortly after, Conor was diagnosed with cancer which he just had major surgery for.
This debut EP features three songs including ‘Thanks A Million’.
THEATRE – Incarnate EP
The debut EP from Limerick alt-noise-makers who started out on the live circuit first supporting Gurriers, DIIV, English Teacher, Shame, Westside Cowboy and playing festival shows at Manchester Psych Fest and End Of The Road.
The five-piece of Maeve O’Shea, Dara Gooney, Oscar Halpin, Gerry Sheil and Sean Storan with influences cited include Lankum, Just Mustard, and Sinead O’Connor, and this EP features their recent single ‘The Fall’ along with new single ‘Gaudete’. The band effectively traverse the shoegaze, alt-rock, dream pop throughline.
Pond – Terrestrials
The new album from the Perth psych-rock collective Pond, the long-running Kevin Parker-adjacent project of Nicholas Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan, Shiny Joe Ryan and James Ireland. Pond have been one of Australia’s most reliably ambitious psych bands across more than a decade, balancing space-rock excess with sharp glam-pop songwriting. Terrestrials arrives off the back of a strong recent run with more of a new wave vibe.
Janus Rasmussen – Inert
The new solo album from the Icelandic producer Janus Rasmussen, best known to many as one half of Kiasmos with Ólafur Arnalds. Rasmussen’s solo work tends to lean further into hardware-synth textures and a deeper, more dance-leaning emotional palette than the Kiasmos records, and Inert looks set to continue that. Quiet, beautifully assembled electronic music for headphones and rooms.
Pye Corner Audio – More Songs About The Sun
Martin Jenkins is one of the UK’s most reliably interesting voices in cosmic synth, library-music adjacent electronic and Ghost Box-school hauntology music with his project Pye Corner Audio. The title is a knowing nod to Talking Heads’ More Songs About Buildings and Food, and signals another installment in Pye Corner Audio’s ongoing solar-themed work. Ride’s Andy Bell features on vocals on four tracks and author Ian Rankin pops up on ‘The Breath Of Now’
For anyone with a soft spot for analogue-leaning British electronic music with a quietly cinematic centre, or who liked Boards Of Canada’s Inferno but would prefer less oppressive cult and doom influences, this might do the trick.
Graham Coxon – Castle Park
The new solo album from the Blur guitarist, songwriter and visual artist, the follow-up to 2021’s Superstate graphic novel and accompanying record. Coxon’s solo work has always sat sideways from Blur, weirder and more lo-fi, with a strong streak of Anglo-Americana running through it. Castle Park is the latest installment in a quietly substantial parallel catalogue.
sha ray & DJ Haram – Critical Thot
A collaborative release from Philly rapper sha ray and the Philadelphia-based experimental producer DJ Haram, one half of 700 Bliss with Moor Mother. Critical Thot brings sha ray’s sharp, conversational delivery into the orbit of DJ Haram’s gritty, percussive production world, one of the more interesting underground releases of the week.
Also released this week
- Ama – Ama
- Chlöe & Timbaland – RESURRECTION
- Daniel Lanois – Belladonna Nocturne
- M Huncho – THE WIZARD
- Orquestra Pacifico Tropical – El Poder
- Placebo – Placebo RE:CREATED
- Roll Deep – Best In The Game Mixtape
- The Alchemist- Liquid Form
- Tucker Zimmerman – Dream Me A Dream
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.
