New Albums and Releases: Curtisy, Léa Sen, Matt Berninger, Acid Granny and more

Here’s a rundown of new albums and releases, including new albums and EPs on DSPs and physical releases in record shops this week.

Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2025.

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New Albums

Curtisy, hikii – Beauty In The Beast

Beauty In The Beast is the follow up release from last year’s critically-acclaimed Irish album of the year nominee, and Nialler9 chart-topper What Was The Question from the Jobstown rapper.

Beauty In The Beast was produced by hikii who made some of the beats on Curtisy’s debut record and the artist said the mixtape “is about finding hope in the hopelessness”.

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Léa Sen – Levels

The debut album on Partisan Records from a French London based singer-songwriter and producer Léa Sen we like.

Experimental pop, R&B, guitar confessionals and trip-hop are touchstones on this record which is “imagined as a surreal, liminal hotel where each room holds a different chapter of her life”, the record plays with the tension between reality and dreamlike abstraction.”

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Alan Sparhawk & Trampled By Turtles – Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles

The second solo album from Alan Sparhawk of Low recorded with the assistance of long-time friends and fellow Minnesotans Trampled by Turtles.

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Foxwarren – 2

Canadian quintet Foxwarren are a band featuring Andy Shauf, Avery and Darryl Kissick, Dallas Bryson, and Colin Nealis. It’s released on ANTI, and has a folk rock retro vibe.

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Matt Berninger – Get Sunk

The frontman and lyricist for The National’s second solo album, made with producer and engineer Sean O’Brien who also co-wrote many of the songs. features Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Booker T Jones, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon. Most of them worked together with Berninger and O’Brien in a Silverlake, CA basement studio.

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caroline – caroline 2

The London-based collective released their second album of experimental songwriting on Rough Trade, with a feature from Caroline Polachek.

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Shura – I Got Too Sad For My Friends

Shura returns after 6 years away with the third album after 2019’s forevher and 2016’s breakthrough record Nothing’s Real.

Though it’s an album rooted in themes of depression and loneliness it is far from downcast, it’s an album that stays fully present in its feelings and plunges its fingers into the earth – even when it can be painful to do so. It was produced by Luke Smith (Foals, Shygirl, Depeche Mode) and features collaborations with Cassandra Jenkins, Becca Mancari and Helado Negro.

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Cliffords – Salt of the Lee EP

Rising Cork indie pop band drop a four-track EP on Soil To The Sun / Relentless Records featuring recent singles ‘Dungarvan Bay’, ‘Buttersweeet’ and new song ‘My Favourite Monster’.

Catch them at Forbidden Fruit, All Together Now and UK and European festivals.

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Acid Granny – Our Husband

The electronic shopping trolley nomads Acid Granny release an album of music captured by “Our Husband” – a man called Oli Ryan from Crossboyne, Co. Mayo. The song ‘I’m A Massive Child’ reminds me of the band Suicide.

Enjoy this collection of heartfelt moments captured by him during jams in ULO Studios, Phibsborough from 2021-2023. Every Dublin band needs a sturdy man from the West of Ireland to look after them.

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yeule – Evangelic Girl Is a Gun

Yeule is the Singapore-born, Los Angeles-based nonbinary musician who returns with a new album “coalescing the soundscapes of glitch-pop electronica, alt rock, and trip-hop.”

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Obongjayar – Paradise Now

Obongjayar releases a new album on September Recordings which was produced between London and LA with Kwes Darko (Pa Salieu, John Glacier), Yeti Beats (Doja Cat) and Beach Noise (Kendrick Lamar, Baby Keem, Bakar) and features Little Simz.

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Demise Of Love – Demise Of Love

Demise Of Love is the new project from Daniel Avery, James Greenwood’s Ghost Culture, and Working Men’s Club.

The result is a heady fusion of industrial dreamscapes, acid house intensity, and starkly beautiful melodies.

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Quantic – DJ-Kicks

Will Holland contributes to the long-running DJ mix series, billed as a “final chapter” with an original track from his alias Sobredosis, and exclusive collaborative productions by Alfa Mist, Frente Cumbiero, The Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto, The Maghreban, and more.

Latin percussion, cinematic jazz flourishes, dusty disco textures, and warm club energy.

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BABA – Truth

Irish soul pop artist releases debut album with production and co-writes by Enda Gallery (Strange Boy). Truth is a personal story drawing experiences of multiple miscarriages, fertility treatments, resilience, love, grief and loss.

Loosely divided into four stages, the album portrays different junctures of her journey, from nervous hospital appointments to a newborn baby on her knee, with each quarter connected by a unique voice note interlude.

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Also released today

• Aesop Rock – Black Hole Superette
• Garbage – Let All That We Imagine Be The Light
• Goddess – Goddess
• Lionmilk – When The Flowers Bloom
• Sally Shapiro – Ready To Live A Lie
• Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)
• Swans – Birthing
• Ty Segall – Possession
• VERRACO – Basic Maneuvers EP