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The best albums of June 2025
New Albums & Releases out today: Kae Tempest, Merpire, Rival Consoles, Laurie Shaw and more

New Albums & Releases out today: Kae Tempest, Merpire, Rival Consoles, Laurie Shaw and more

Merpire

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.


New Albums and Releases



New Albums

Kae Tempest – Self Titled

The lyricist, rapper and spoken word artist’s new album made with Frazer T Smith embraces a new era, with songs informed by transitioning, identity and booming rap productions and contemporary pop.


Self Titled is a love letter to Tempest’s younger self — a conversation across time, shaped by the people, places, and experiences that define him. Guest appearances include Neil Tennant, Young Fathers, Connie Constance, and Tawiah.


Merpire – Milk Pool

The second album from Naarm/Melbourne’s artist Rhiannon Atkinson-Howatt is for “the romantics, the daydreamers, and those moving through intense periods of change, with the title representing “the murky fluidity of the action took to create it” dipping into synth pop, piano balladry, acoustic lo-fi and scuzzy guitar pop.


Rival Consoles – Landscape from Memory

Electronic producer Ryan Lee West returns to Erased Tapes for his ninth studio album, “partly stitched together from a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” made restlessly away from the studio desk while traveling.


Shelly – Shelly 2

Clairo’s other project formed in 2020, Shelly also consists of Claud, Noa Getzug and Josh Mehling who have an affinity for bedroom pop and sonic romance.


Laurie Shaw – Magnetosphere

Prolific Kerry singer-songwriter has slowed his releases slightly but he still releases double or triple the music most other people do (his albums count to over 100 on their own at this point). Which is a pity in a way because there’s only so many hours in the day to get a proper listen to this stuff, particularly as Shaw is always progressing as a lyricist and songwriter, and this latest is another zinger of wry alt-pop songwriting.

“I had a dream I was cutting a record called “Magnetosphere”. I was up the mountain and snow was coming down thick and fast. There was nothing else for me to do, it was like power cut territory up there, yet somehow everything I needed studio-wise was working fine. It was just after Christmas and my little room was hot from the blasting radiator. I didn’t really have to concentrate, the songs were making themselves. Snowflakes mushed on the window, somehow late at night but early morning all at the same time. With nothing to compare anything to, just yellowed pages of lyrics. They must have fallen right out of my head. Watching my dad traipse up to the outhouse puffing a train plume of icy breath. In a few hours time, I’d be presented with a glass of wine for my efforts. End of the day work, start of the night work. Where things can loosen right up and you can sit in it. When I woke up, I said, I had a dream I was cutting a record called Magnetosphere. This is that record.”


Various Artists – Place: Ireland 

Efa O’Neill’s compilation features a selection of Irish electronic and experimental musicians including Optmst, Brawni, Sloucho, Lighght, Flowers By Night, Soria, Lúnasa, Polyp, TR One and more.

Place: Ireland is out on the Air Texture label, as part of an international series focused on the intersection of music and activism, and proceeds go to charitable causes supporting humanitarian and environmental initiatives.


Dropkick Murphys – For The People

The thirteenth studio album by American Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys features collaborations with The Mary Wallopers, The Scratch and Billy Bragg.


Stoat – I contain multitudes

Long standing “Stylistically inconsistent indie / pop / rock” Irish band Stoat release a new record possibly their first since 2018.


Wigs – Pressure Control EP

Fuaim is a Dublin based record-label and club night focusing predominantly on the sounds of progressive house and trance, and UK producer Wigs fits right in here with a four-tracker of late-night club sounds in that vein.


Nilüfer Yanya – Dancing Shoes EP

This four-track EP was written alongside a collection of tracks that Nilüfer re-approached with her creative partner Wilma Archer when she returned from touring her latest record My Method Actor.


Also released today


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