The Limerick artist returns with a deeply personal record, again blending rap with traditional Irish music as heard on 2021’s debut Holy/Unholy.
Strange Boy has released his second album, Say Nothing, out now via Welcome to the New World, alongside the announcement that he’ll be taking an extended, indefinite break from music.
Written between 2022 and 2023 and produced by Enda Gallery, Say Nothing is a portrait of Jordan Kelly’s Limerick, through hard times touching on grief, masculinity, persistence, friendships that define him and loss – through the lens of the recurring figure of Nitty, drawn from both his own experience and the lives of people he grew up around.
“It’s a very personal record of my upbringing in Limerick and how that shaped me,” he says. “It was a bit of a free-for-all culture, because there was a lot of violence going around and you didn’t know which way it was going to go. I tried to capture the essence of what I felt the mood of the city was at the time, and balance that with my own personal perspective.” He’s careful to note it’s his Limerick, not the only one, and that a number of people he knew growing up are no longer alive, something a couple of songs address directly.
The album’s title comes from an instruction he grew up with, say nothing if you got into trouble, and say nothing about how you felt either. “You weren’t told, but you kind of felt that if you talked about that stuff you were going to be seen as lesser than, and it might’ve made you a bit of a target,” he says. Every story on the record is true, he says, if anything softened rather than exaggerated: “All the stories I tell on the album are 100% facts, and even a bit worse. I didn’t want to give it away… out of respect I can’t be putting people’s business out there.”
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“Being vulnerable had really bad connotations. If you were vulnerable you were seen as less than, or just weak. So in every song I wanted to marry the two,” he says.
Say Nothing was tracked live in one room at The Stables Studio in Cratloe in January 2024, with a full traditional band of Dermot Sheedy on bodhrán, Conor Crimmins on flute, Sean O’Meara on guitar and Ted Kelly on banjo, the same line-up that backed him on The Tommy Tiernan Show in 2022.
Producer Enda Gallery called it the record’s defining choice: “On this I really wanted to experiment, bring in a full trad band, the top musicians in Ireland, and have them create all of the music live together, all in one room.” The result is faster and more danceable than its predecessor, which Gallery describes as “the yin to that yang.”
Strange Boy returned to his given name Jordan Kelly for the Diaspora Green rap mixtape, which was easily one of the Irish rap releases of 2025.
Say Nothing tracklist:
- Roses
- Damned
- 5 a Side
- Tragedy of Nitty
- Society of Absence
- Say Nothing
- Immortal
- Foul (feat. Rebel Phoenix)
- God Help Him (Seemingly He Didn’t)
- Blood
- Content
- Dionysus
Say Nothing is out now via Bandcamp and streaming platforms.
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.
