It is a huge week for music, led by Gilla Band’s Pugnello, our album of the week. Gurriers return with a raucous second album, an incredible trad-psych record from Trá Pháidín, Julia Jacklin delivers one of the records of the autumn, and there is new material from M83, Blondshell, Leon Bridges and the final album from Soft Cell. Plus electronic records from Jam City, Axel Boman & Superpitcher and Bullion, and an album that may be his last from Strange Boy.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums + EPs
Album of the week
Gilla Band – Pugnello
The fourth album from Gilla Band, the Dublin four-piece of Vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, bassist Daniel Fox and drummer Adam Faulkner – whose scouring, gleefully abrasive noise-rock, with collapsing riffs, whipping walls of noise and Dara Kiely’s frayed, funny and harrowing lyrics are always a welcome return, particularly when the world has recently been matching the band’s discordant discombobulation in its current affairs.
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Pugnello, has made them a unique proposition have become one of the most thrilling and uncompromising forces in modern music, and not just here in Ireland.
‘Placeholder’ turns his comfort-distractions into a portrait of his own mind with a diving techno-bassline leading to Kiely’s frank confession of “I’m blaring a dangerous amount of Coldplay”, ‘Giraffe’ finds unexpected tenderness in an Irish mammy chasing him out the door with a hairbrush despite its clopping techno outro and ‘Three Hands Clapping’ finds the recent transplant to Cork alienated from his hometown unfamiliar with the characters who inhabit it (“Dublin in season four”).
Even the title is odd: the name of a haunted font on a laptop from a horror novel by Kiely’s uncle, while the sleeve is his own painting worked over blurred, badly framed tour photos, making a positive out of a negative. As he puts it in liner notes accompanying the release, you get through things, not over them.
Musically, the album feels even more of a pressure cooker than before, with the band clearly more readily moving beyond a foundation of guitar music in favour of pummelling industrial hits, metallic noise, pulsating techno-inspired basslines and found digital textures rupturing a hole in the Gilla Band space-time continuum.
Trá Pháidín – Cloch ‘s Claí
A new album from Trá Pháidín, and the Irish collective’s first for World of Echo, built like a dry-stone wall, with each of its ten tracks as one stone, the follow on to their debut album An 424 – a loose concept album written in honour of the bus that goes from Galway city to Connemara.
Cloch ‘s Claí pushes further into the improvisational territory the collective have been building towards, drawing from ornamentation and accompaniment traditions in Irish trad music alongside krautrock, free jazz, post-rock, minimalism and drone.
The album satirical look at Ireland’s relationship with its native language and the Gaeltacht, inspired in part by Myles na gCopaleen’s 1941 novel An Béal Bocht (also known as Brian O’Nolan, also known as Flann O’Brien), touching on tokenism, housing, gentry politics and ribbon developments along the way with John ‘Spud’ Murphy doing some recording, co-production and mixing too.
The song ‘An Béal Bocht’ with its trad meets jazz meets psych-rock is the best thing the band have done yet – easily one of my songs of the year, and the album is full of songs as engaging as it and overall builds richly on their debut with sprawling widescreen compositions against the tension-filled backdrop of an Irish heritage been squeezed out of every stone bit by bit.
Go out of your way, reliant bus route or no, to see this band live wherever they are.
Trá Pháidín Live
- 25 Sep – Féile Dorn San Aer, Gweedore, Co. Donegal
- 26 Sep – Seanscoil Sailearna, Inverin, Connemara
- 2 Oct – LSAD (Limerick School of Art & Design), Limerick
- 3 Oct – An Taibhdhearc, Galway City
- 31 Oct – Cape Clear Island, Co. Cork
- 7 Nov – Teach Damhsa, Glaise Beag, Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle Peninsula)
- 21 Nov – Expected Music, Walthamstow Trades Hall, London
- 6 Dec – The Button Factory, Dublin
- 20 Dec – Boole Library UCC, Cork City
Gurriers – Nobody’s Coming To Save You
The second album from Gurriers, the Dublin band who have become one of the most talked-about acts in the current wave of Irish post-punk and who would readily cite Gilla Band as an inspiration.
Released on Play It Again Sam and recorded between Attica Studios in Donegal and London’s Holy Mountain with producers Mark Bowen of Idles and Loren Humphrey (Geese, Automatic, Westside Cowboy), Nobody’s Coming To Save You soups up everything that made their debut album a going concern.
Its four singles chart the album’s dynamics: the title track reframes an apparently hopeless refrain as a call to collective action, ‘Party Lines’ aims its dance-punk at political hypocrisy, written as the war in Sudan escalated, the Samuel-Beckett ‘Nothing Happens Twice’ keeps the momentum high, while the slowest of the four, ‘Pins’, turns reflective, dwelling on mortality and the things left undone.
Nobody’s Coming To Save You leaves an impression of lyricist Dan Hoff trying to find meaning, instil purpose and reach understanding as a complicated world makes him rise to a shout to match its tone, represented by the band’s fiery arrangements, which tend to be caustic and heat-blasted. Gurriers run on fumes of disillusion.
Upcoming gigs:
- Wednesday October 28th – Belfast, Ulster Hall (with Enola Gay)
- Thursday October 29th – Dublin, Vicar Street (with Enola Gay)
- Sunday November 1st – Dublin, 3Olympia Theatre (with Child Of Prague)
Julia Jacklin – The Gem
The fourth album from Julia Jacklin, the Australian singer-songwriter whose stark, emotionally exacting writing, across records like 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE, has made her among the most affecting songwriters of her generation. Her debut for 4AD, The Gem turns on a tension she calls the central question of her life: the pull between wanting to love and be loved and wanting to be free. Named after the Melbourne bar that became home after she moved from Sydney, it was dug out over nearly a year at Rat Shack studio above the pub, self-produced with Robert Muinos and cut with a tight band of friends. Led by the ’80s-jangle single ‘Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)’, it is a soaring document of a songwriter finding her way back to herself, and likely to be one of the records of the autumn from one of my favourite voices and lyricists in music.
Julia Jacklin plays the National Stadium in Dublin next February.
M83 – I Wrote You A Letter
The new album from M83, the project of French musician Anthony Gonzalez, whose widescreen, nostalgic dream-pop peaked with the era-defining Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. I Wrote You A Letter promises a return to the lush, cinematic blend of guitars, synths and melancholy that made his name.
Strange Boy – Say Nothing
The second album from Strange Boy, the Limerick rapper whose personal, unflinching writing collides hip-hop with Irish trad. Released this week alongside news that he is taking an indefinite break from music, Say Nothing feels like a fittingly raw and unguarded full stop. 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.
Jam City – My World
A new album from Jam City, the British producer Jack Latham, whose 2012 debut Classical Curves was a flashpoint for a type of underground electronic music of the time through the label Night Slugs. Latham has since moved through deconstructed club, pop and beyond, right up to 2023’s Jam City Presents EFM, which I loved a lot.
My World is the latest electronic pop-centred turn from a restless, forward-thinking artist, with regular vocal collaborator Aidan returning alongside Hannah Yadi, Solv and more.
Axel Boman & Superpitcher – Tell It To The Mountain
A collaborative album from two revered European house producers, Sweden’s Axel Boman and Germany’s Superpitcher. Born from a transformative three-day hike to Sweden’s Helags Glacier, Tell It To The Mountain is warm, playful, soulful dance music, and the first release on Boman’s new Blurry label.
Bullion – Nearly
A new album from Bullion, the British producer and songwriter Nathan Jenkins, whose gauzy, off-kilter pop has made him a cult favourite and an in-demand collaborator. Out on Ghostly International, Nearly continues his run of wistful, weightless songwriting and centres his voice after a recent album of heavy guest spots (L Devine features on two tracks). A Bullion album always features some sort of magnetising off-kilter pop to take home with you even if the rest of it doesn’t land longer-term.
Tom Morello – Everyone Gets Everything They Want
Billed as the first true solo album from Tom Morello, the Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist, after three records as The Nightwatchman and three collaborative Atlas Underground albums. It features guest appearances from Kneecap, Beartooth, Serj Tankian of System of a Down and Morello’s son Roman, and channels his signature blend of riff and righteous politics.
Harmony Index – Lights On
The debut album from Harmony Index, the solo project of Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist and producer Nico Leibman, who has toured with the likes of Jessica Pratt and Ana Roxanne. Out on the Peak Oil sublabel FO, Lights On plays like a DJ set, drifting between piano-led trip-hop, lounge, dream-pop, 2-step and breakbeat house, drawing on the late-’90s meeting point of pop songwriting and electronic experimentation, with Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope, Everything But The Girl’s Walking Wounded and Prefab Sprout among its touchstones. A lush, nocturnal treat for dream-pop romantics.
300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks – This Is Spa Town!
A surprise-released debut collaboration between 300SkullsAndCounting, the bedroom project of London artist Hal Hewetson (also of Mitsubishi Suicide), and Jenny Sparks, out now on XL Recordings. Conceived as a tribute to a demolished Leamington Spa skatepark, its nine tracks are an intriguing, out-of-nowhere left-field arrival, and the pair have announced a run of UK and European headline dates to follow.
Leon Bridges – Happiness Anytime
A new album from Leon Bridges, the Texan singer whose smooth, throwback soul has evolved into something more contemporary and expansive across his career. Happiness Anytime is produced by J Lloyd-Watson and Lydia Kitto of the band Jungle, and results in a warm and inviting set of uplifting soul songs, anchored by that sweet voice of his. Bassist Pino Palladino (D’Angelo) plays on the record.
claire rousay & Martyna Basta – hotel room
A collaborative album from the American experimental artist claire rousay and the Polish composer Martyna Basta, two of the most interesting voices in contemporary ambient and sound art. hotel room weaves field recordings, electronics and intimacy into something hushed and deeply affecting, and was borne out of a residency invite from Unsound Festival.
Orbital – Glastonbury 1994
A newly released recording of Orbital’s landmark 1994 Glastonbury headline set, long celebrated as one of the most celebrated live performances in dance-music history and a pivotal moment in bringing electronic music to festival main stages. I feel like I have seen footage on BBC from it if not that year when I was 12 but since, and the set’s closing song ‘Chime’ is on Youtube.
Your Old Droog – Bread & Butter
A new album from Your Old Droog, the Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-raised rapper whose dense, witty, reference-packed lyricism has made him a favourite among hip-hop heads. Bread & Butter is a sharp set of boom-bap craftsmanship. It features Georgia Anne Muldrow, Oddisee, Masta Ace and more.
Blondshell – Violins
The third album from Blondshell, the project of Los Angeles songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum, whose sharp, cathartic indie rock and unsparing lyrics have made her a critical favourite. Arriving fast after 2025’s If You Asked for a Picture, Violins continues her run of barbed, big-hearted songs.
Murex – Inventio
The debut album from Murex, a Swedish musician and visual artist and one of Young’s newest signings. Made over three years in Sweden and named after Bach’s Inventions, which she played on piano growing up, Inventio fuses glitchy electronica, orchestral sequencing and Baroque-tinged avant-pop, drawing on Nordic folklore and touchstones like Björk and Elizabeth Fraser. Across ten tracks it confronts body dysmorphia, control and a fracturing sense of self, reaching toward liberation, with every video self-directed. Ethereal, strange and singular.
Tinashe – Popstar
The eighth album from Tinashe, the American singer who has spent the last decade evolving from major-label pop hopeful into among independent music’s most respected R&B artists. Popstar completes the trilogy begun with BB/Ang3l and Quantum Baby, and marks her return to a major label on her own terms: a feature-free, sixteen-track sweep through pop, R&B, dance and electronic sounds. A confident, knowing statement from an artist hitting her stride.
Sounds from a Safe Harbour – SFSH25 Mixtape
The festival is also releasing its first-ever vinyl record, SFSH25 Mixtape which captures 8 highlights from MIXTAPE, the sold-out orchestral performance staged at SFSH25 at Cork Opera House, featuring Jon Hopkins, The Staves, Amanda Bergman, Sam Amidon, Sean Carey, Leif Vollebekk and Angie McMahon performing with the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra and SFSH Choir, conducted by Cormac McCarthy.
It’s available on Anthem Vinyl.
SENU – Metanoia
Dublin-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Killeen quietly released a new album of music from his SENU project which blends electronic beats, jazz and hip-hop – this time around it’s a collection of cosmic jazz electronic music in the lane of Flying Lotus. It’s his first album since recording the album Jetlag in one day in 2021.
Gaspar Claus – Cells
A new album from Gaspar Claus, the French cellist, composer and producer whose boundary-blurring work moves between contemporary classical, experimental electronics and collaboration across genres. Cells is a rich, texturally adventurous record that was completed after a period of struggle in its conception – resolved through the help of the mantra – “It’s simply precious to make music.”
“I had my dream studio built in Banyuls-sur-Mer, where I live part of the year, because I couldn’t manage to work in Paris,”the musician explains. “I spent about a year and a half there working on Cells. The creative process was complicated. The album resisted a lot before taking shape. I went through doubts and questioning, even moments where I considered giving up.”
Also released this week
- Adult DVD – Adult DVD
- Benny Sings – 22 Durnham Dew
- Cara Delevingne – Not Normal
- Chloé Calliet – Dance Again EP
- Conor Furlong – Descent
- Darude – Sandstorm (The Remixes)
- Dungen – Vidrig Vår
- Frankie Stew And Harvey Gunn – Goodbye For Now
- Joy Division – ETERNAL (Live)
- Kiefer – Memory
- Nothing But Thieves – Stray Dogs
- Protomartyr – Hotel Usona
- Sasha & John Digweed – Northern Exposure Redux
- Soft Cell – Danceteria
- Space Afrika – Quiet Storm
- Suede – Coming Up (Steven Wilson Mix)
- Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore
- The Sick Man Of Europe – The Intermittent Signal
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.
