Here’s a rundown of new releases *plus a few from last week I missed out on due to holidays*, 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.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums
james K – Friend
I’m totally enamoured with the third album from New York artist Jamie Krasner on AD 93, which I’ve been selling to people as like “Caroline Polachek if she made an ambient shoegaze record”.
It’s dreamy pop textures are tantamount to an afterimage of the summer just gone, a transitory ease into darker colder nights with sunny hazed production.
RA feature: The Art of Production: james K
- Released last week.
Baxter Dury – Allbarone
The ninth album from Baxter Dury on Heavenly Recordings was produced by superproducer Paul Epworth and is his first in five years. The title track is a beautiful slice of electro-sleaze tongue in cheek.
“It’s kind of a character arc that goes through the whole thing, two personalities,” he explains. “It’s very critical of people, this album, whoever they are, maybe some bloke with a moustache and sockless loafers in Shoreditch or a fat old Chiswick gangster lording it up in a really comfortable middle class part of London”
Baxter has upcoming Irish dates.
11 November – Mandela Hall, Belfast
12 November – Vicar Street, Dublin
Maruja – Pain to Power
Manchester band who combine punk, noise and cosmic jazz, and have Irish roots release their debut album which leans more into the vocal punk side of their sound before elongating into noisy sax-assisted transcendence.
The songs hear are informed by the tumult of UK life in the 2020s, with social and political change, community and solidarity recurring themes.
Titanic – Hagen
Guatemalan cellist and songwriter follows up her acclaimed solo album Sentir Que No Sabes, by returning to her proggy symphonic pop project collaboration with Mexico City’s Héctor Tosta (aka I la Católica).
Through its ’80s-sounding synth and percussion pop work, it recalls the Fairlight era of Bush and Gabriel, with Daniel Lopatin contributing his trademark billowy synth sound on ‘Pájaro de fuego’ (Nate Salon – Oneohtrix Point Never, oklou – is on co-production), The duo also combine industrial speed tempos and sounds with violins and voice which adds to some experimental workout on the proggy ‘Gotera’.
Gareth Quinn Redmond, Méabh McKenna and RF Chaney – Throwing Shapes
The Irish musician trio harpist Méabh McKenna, drummer Ross Chaney and violin/synth Gareth Quinn Redmond made an album together called Throwing Shapes, and it’s a record I’ve already returned to for its gentle unfurling of sound – lead through harp, sustained synth notes and nuanced delicate percussion – as heard on the opening track ‘Calyx’ and similarly on ‘Sonnoh’ and ‘So and So’ (largely sans percussion), amidst ambient passages on ‘Meant To Say’ and vintage synth-lead filmic score on ‘Lo And Behold’.
The Redneck Manifesto – Grushy
To the generation of alternative Irish music fans who came up in the last ’90s and early 2000s, no music sounds more like home soil than the instrumental guitar work of TRM / The Redneck Manifesto.
The trio of – Matthew Bolger, Niall Byrne and Richard Egan – released their eighth album, seven tracks not uploaded to streaming services like Spotify for reasons of responding to military tech complicity – and released on lush 10″ gatefold vinyl on TenSpot Records (who have made 10″ records their entire MO).
The songs here are as inviting as anything the band have put out over the years, an almost comforting collection of instrumental music largely rooted in the band’s trademark guitar lickery, and as with recent albums, an increased emphasis on synth textures throughout.
Turns out they do make music like this anymore.
Junior Brother – The End
Kerryman Ronan Kealy’s wonky folk music project arrive at third album milestone and continues to push his music into odd and engaging shapes informed by traditional music and folkloric flights of musical fancy.
Much of The End (co-produced with John “Spud” Murphy) is a stated attempt to open up the veil into other worlds, made to be performed nocturnally in a fairy fort field, while illuminating and reflecting the madness of contemporary living.
“The sound of the album is supposed to take the organic instruments of Irish traditional music and lift them somewhere else,” Kealy says, “like the otherworldly Irish music sometimes heard from Fairy Forts at twilight on country roads, impossible to recreate upon hearing.”
The effect is disorientating, with Kealy’s madcap-leaning vocals cutting through the discombobulation along with tin whistle and his trusty foot tambourine, as harmonium, violin, accordion and guitar among other instruments swirl around the record burrowing deeper into a mystical mire.
Much of the album’s inspiration was drawn from UCD’s Folklore Collection on duchas.ie, “I delved into the manuscripts—endless eyewitness accounts of Fairy Forts being stepped into and the land altering, the familiar mutating,” Junior Brother shares. “Farmers, teachers, the sober, the smart—all losing their way home one way or the other.”
Gruff Rhys – Dim Probs
The former Super Furry singer’s ninth solo album is his fourth fully Welsh language long player out on Mogwai’s Rock Action Records.
Pomes Penyeach – Words by James Joyce, Music by Adrian Crowley and Matthew Nolan
“First published in 1927 by Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Pomes Penyeach is a timeless collection of thirteen poems that has captivated readers for generations with its signature blend of humour, wit, and profound insight into the human experience. In 2019, a serendipitous phone call between musicians Crowley and Nolan sparked a creative collaboration that would bring James Joyce’s iconic poems to life. Nolan confided that since his school days, he had dreamed of hearing Joyce’s words brought to life through song, and this spark of inspiration would ultimately give birth to their collaborative masterpiece.
Diving right in, Crowley immersed himself in the project, emerging with raw, demo recordings that served as the foundation for the album. He joined forces with Nolan in a Dublin rehearsal room, where they collaboratively shaped and refined the songs. Crowley and Nolan then called upon the luminous and effervescent talents of vocalist Lisa Hannigan, Cora Venus Lunny (viola), Seán Mac Erlaine (bass clarinet, electronics, horn, flute & percussion) and Kevin Murphy (cello) to bring Pomes Penyeach to life.
The original iteration of this project was to be a stand-alone live performance as commissioned by Saint Patrick’s Festival in March 2020. However, a year later, with John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, ØXN) behind the recording controls, the group reassembled in The Museum Of Literature Ireland (MoLI) and the album was recorded over the course of two days.”
Chris Wong – For Me I Try EP
Irish / Hong Kongese singer-songwriter Chris Wong, also of the band Papa Romeo, releases his solo debut EP which uses neo-soul and jazz textures across six tracks of introspective confessional songwriting which Wong calls “self-work”.
The EP was recorded at Blackmountain Studios in Dundalk with Alex Borwick, Drums: Rob de Boer, Bass: Louis Younge,: Keys & Synths: Dan Coyne.
Cian Sweeney – As If I Always Knew – Improvisations 1
Cian Sweeney moves away from the electronic pop collaborative project 1000 Beasts for something more personal and meditative in the form of solo piano instrumental arrangements.
Also released this week
- Ariel Pink – With You Every Night
- David Bowie – I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002–2016)
- Die Spitz – Something To Consume
- Frost Children – SISTER
- George Riley – More Is More
- Guerilla Toss – You’re Weird Now
- Ho99o9 – Tomorrow We Escape
- JADE – THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!
- Jens Lekman – Songs for Other People’s Weddings
- Josh Ritter – I Believe in You, My Honeydew
- Joviale – Mount Crystal
- KASSA OVERALL – Cream
- King Princess – Girl Violence
- LEISURE – Welcome to the Mood
- Margaret Glaspy – The Golden Heart Protector EP
- Parcels – LOVED
- Peyton – Au
- Robyn – Robyn (20th Anniversary)
- Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Perimenopop
- Spinal Tap – The End Continues
- The Hidden Cameras – Bronto
- Verses GT – Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene
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.
