Dublin-Limerick band girlfriend. take our album of the week with their second record Carousel, leading a big week for Irish music. There are debut albums from Last Apollo and knifebear, new records from MacDara Yeates, Miriam Ingram, Swimmers Jackson and roe, and EPs from SPOOKLET and Holly Lester. Elsewhere, Iglooghost’s Cyst project and Glasgow jazz force corto.alto push things leftfield, Mykki Blanco and Dizzee Rascal return, Chat Pile and Amyl and the Sniffers bring the noise, and there’s a newly unearthed 1994 live album from The Cranberries.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums + EPs
Album of the week
girlfriend. – Carousel
The new album from girlfriend., the Dublin-Limerick five-piece who have become one of the most thrilling bands in Irish music. Formed almost a decade ago, their music pulls from emo, slowcore, grunge, punk and garage-rock.
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Carousel gathers a shapeshifting intensity into a long-player, with moments of screaming catharsis followed by vocal harmony – the album was trailed by the singles ‘Kitchen Sink’ and the purgative, doom-laced ‘Horses’.
Ambitious, cathartic and increasingly fidgety stylistically, Carousel is an album borne of the moment – aware of the zeitgeist explorations of shoegaze and slowcore, but pre-existing and prone to heavier eruptions, creating an album that runs the gamut of guitar-lead rock performance with ease, across its short 28 minutes.
Their debut album To Be Quiet came out in 2023. They play September 18th at The Sound House with Skinner and Soft Drink Millionaire, Left of The Dial in October and support Enter Shakiri in December.
Cyst – ᲘᲘ
The debut album from Cyst, a new collaborative project featuring the inventive producer Iglooghost along and vocalist daisy* (fka BABii.).
ᲘᲘ (pronounced ‘Rabbit’) is released today on on LUCKYME®, and leans into a hip-hop mode albeit shot through the lens of the hyper-frenetic style of an Iglooghost production – making it a restless, ever-shifting sonic adventure, with influences drawn from rediscovering experimental hip-hop records of the past on Anticon and including Cannibal Ox, and was made while raising their first baby.
“We got fixated on a really brief moment where weirdo hip-hop and IDM crossed paths at the very start of the millenium. We became really keen to excavate our favourite old records with this very distinct hybrid genre DNA. Presumably this moment in music quickly fizzled out due to the shows emitting too much body odour. We wanted to try and make songs that felt like a speculative continuation of computer music and mouthbreather hip-hop after a 20 year gap in the historical record.”
corto.alto – SOME SMALL FORTUNE
The new album from corto.alto, the project of Glasgow-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and trombonist Liam Shortall, and one of the most exciting forces in the current wave of UK jazz. Shortall’s 2024 breakthrough Bad With Names earned a Mercury Prize nomination and drew together jazz, dub, hip-hop and electronica.
Out on Ninja Tune, SOME SMALL FORTUNE deepens that fusion, pulling a rotating cast of Glasgow’s finest players into music that is loose, propulsive and endlessly inventive. Warm, heady and hard to pin down, it confirms corto.alto as among the most distinctive voices in British jazz right now. Features Jacob Alon, Mick Jenkins, Anaiis, Oscar Jerome and more.
District are putting him on in Dublin next week.
Last Apollo – I’ll Walk Towards You
The short six-track debut album from Last Apollo, the project of Lucy Rice, shaped over three years after Rice moved to London in the wake of her bandmates relocating and a first real heartbreak, and built out live with a chamber orchestra, I’ll Walk Towards You serves as an ambitious arrival of this Irish chamber pop indie emotional songwriter.
Mykki Blanco – CAFE PARADISO
The fourth album from Mykki Blanco, the rapper, poet and performance artist who has spent a decade as one of queer music’s most fearless voices. Made in New York with producer FaltyDL after a spell studying fine art in Switzerland, CAFE PARADISO trades his old theatrics for something more interior and sensual, a record, in his words, for artsy kids and cosmopolitan aesthetes. Reflective, nocturnal and genuinely assured.
knifebear – knasher
The debut album from knifebear, the Irish 5 piece post-grunge band, who cite influences as Black Sabbath, Queens Of The Stone Age, PJ Harvey and The Stooges.
A tight vibrant collection of stoner-leaning rock tunes with a clear Kyuss influence.
Chat Pile – Who Loves The Sun
The new album from the Oklahoma City band Chat Pile, whose punishing, sludge-caked noise rock has made them one of the most talked-about heavy bands of the decade. Bleak, furious and weirdly cathartic, their music wrings beauty out of ugliness, and led by the single ‘Deep Blue’, Who Loves The Sun tightens the screws further.
MacDara Yeates – Mudlark Ballads
The second album from Irish folk singer MacDara Yeates, The Night Before Larry Got Stretched cofounder.. Rich, literary folk singing that comes after his debut a capella album, and expands with accompaniment and a well-worn but unique songbook.
Macdara says “Most of my life is spent in and around old songs – listening, learning, digging in old books, archives and crackly field recordings. They mean the world to me. Finding new ways to present them – to draw in listeners and expose them to a wider audience – is one of the great privileges of my life. If one tenth of that joy comes across on this record, I will sleep well at night.”
Start with ‘Hiring Time’.
Miriam Ingram – Mariana Trench
A new album from Miriam Ingram, an experimental singer-songwriter from Dublin whose last record, Trampoline, arrived 20 years ago. Described by the artist as a lifetime in the making, Mariana Trench is a mesmerising blend of folk, impressionism and indie rock.
I didn’t set out to make something along the lines of a Richard Linklater film like ‘Boyhood’ (in aural form), but that’s kind of what happened. I started writing and recording ‘Mariana Trench’ around 2008. In fact, there are a couple of songs on it that pre-date even that time. The songs have their own personal value, but the unintended personal element of the record comes from the fact that it was made over such a long period of time. Children were born and grew, loved ones died – life happened.
Swimmers Jackson – Komorebi
The third solo album from Swimmers Jackson, the London-based Irish musician Niall Jackson. Recorded live with his band at One Cat Studios in Crystal Palace and produced by Jesse Gander (Japandroids) in Vancouver, with overdubs in Co. Galway and guests including Brian Kelly of So Cow, Komorebi is warm, literate indie-rock in the lineage of Elliott Smith, R.E.M. and Big Thief.
roe – LOST DOG!
The second album from roe, the Derry songwriter, following her 2022 debut. Its nine songs were written across a year of grief, heartbreak and stubborn forward motion, prompted in part by the death of her dog. Bright, hook-filled indie pop songwriting with less genre-hopping than roe’s early work – focused on feeling and sentiment first.
Personal Trainer – Human Assholes
A new album from Personal Trainer, the chaotic, ever-expanding Amsterdam indie-rock collective led by Willem Smit. Their scrappy, hook-loaded and gleefully unpredictable songs have made them a favourite on the European circuit, and Human Assholes promises more of their oddball charm.
Kraak & Smaak – Velvet Seas Remixed
A remix album from Kraak & Smaak, the long-running Dutch trio who have spent two decades twisting funk, disco and electronic soul into warm, analogue dancefloor music. Velvet Seas Remixed hands the best moments of their 2025 album Velvet Seas to a well-chosen cast of international producers, Yuksek, Anoraak, Ray Mang and Harvey Sutherland among them, spanning French touch, Brazilian disco-funk and Melbourne club. Out on Boogie Angst, it keeps the originals’ melodic warmth while pushing everything brighter and leaner for the floor.
Dizzee Rascal – We Want Bass
The ninth album from Dizzee Rascal, the rap pioneer whose 2003 debut Boy in da Corner won the Mercury Prize and helped birth grime. As the title suggests, We Want Bass is a full-throated love letter to UK sound-system culture, 15 tracks of dancefloor-built, low-end-heavy bangers topped with Dizzee’s irreverent, quick-witted bars. A pioneer paying homage to the underground that made him.
The Cranberries – Live at The London Astoria II, 1994
A newly uncovered live recording from The Cranberries, capturing the beloved Irish band at the London Astoria in 1994, between their debut and the breakthrough of No Need To Argue. Long thought lost, the tape catches Dolores O’Riordan and co. on the cusp of global fame, tearing through ‘Linger’, ‘Dreams’ and an early ‘Zombie’. A poignant, essential archival release for one of Ireland’s greatest bands.
Amyl and the Sniffers – Truth Or Consequence
A live album and concert film from Amyl and the Sniffers, the Melbourne quartet who have become one of the most electrifying live bands in the world. Recorded in an intimate, increasingly rowdy room at El Coyote in Los Angeles, Truth Or Consequence reimagines their catalogue in loose, country-fried arrangements, throwing in two unreleased tracks and a cover of Slim Dusty’s ‘Lights On The Hill’. Amy Taylor and co. sound like they are having the time of their lives, and the energy is infectious.
Children of Zeus – As The World Burns
A new album from Children of Zeus, the Manchester duo of Konny Kon and Tyler Daley, whose rich fusion of soul, hip-hop and R&B has made them cult favourites in UK black music. As The World Burns channels troubled times into warm, grown-up, deeply soulful songwriting.
SPOOKLET – HAVE YOU SEEN MY BODY? EP
Dublin-based experimental electronic artist releases a four-track project that sits somewhere between deconstructed club music, ambient, sound design and experimental pop, built around themes of self-erasure, emotional survival and transformation.
Holly Lester – Open Your Mind EP
The debut EP from Holly Lester, the County Armagh-born, Belfast-based DJ, producer and Free The Night nightlife campaigner who has spent nearly two decades as one of Ireland’s most respected underground selectors. Landing as the tenth release on her own Duality Trax label, Open Your Mind draws on early London tech house, UK garage, breakbeat and ’90s progressive house across four tracks, closing with an after-hours remix from Berlin-via-Australia producer DJ Life.
Also released this week
- Angus & Julia Stone – Karaoke Bar
- Arab Strap – Half-Told Tales
- Bayonne – Filters
- Beyoncé – B’DAY (20th ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION)
- Brownswood Recordings – Future Bubblers 9
- case/lang/veirs – case/lang/veirs (10th Anniversary Edition)
- Faux Real – Poison Time
- Kasabian – ACT III
- Lily Seabird – Lightspheres On Their Way
- Matilda Mann – Kismet
- Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo – Psychedelia In White
- Paris Paloma – The Fatal Flaw
- PRESIDENT – Blood Of Your Empire
- Rebecca Black – Age of the Exhibitionist
- Sharp Pins – Mod Mayday 23
- The Thermals – Under Crushing Rain
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hidden In Pieces (Live at the Royal Albert Hall)
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.
