Lankum’s Radie Peat is our album of the week with her debut solo record No Human Tongue Can Tell. U2 return with their first album of new material in nine years, Bell X1 release their ninth, and Springsteen, Tom Waits and a long Irish cast take on Shane MacGowan’s songbook. Rising Irish cloud rapper Earfzilla releases his debut mixtape and Robocobra Quartet’s five hour long album arrives, Armand Hammer surprise-release a new album, Blackhaine makes his XL debut, Trentemøller goes full shoegaze, Snoh Aalegra is back after five years, 2hollis delivers his fifth album in five years and Los Bitchos invite their friends, while Kim Deal brings an orchestra to the Barbican.
It’s a big week for Irish releases beyond those, with Robocobra Quartet’s 100-song album and records from Daire Heffernan, There is an Island, Bring Your Own Hammer, The Expert & Donwill, peter o sullivan, Dani Larkin, Cormac O Caoimh and Eoin Dolan, plus Bucket’s first vinyl. See the full list in our 2026 Irish album releases.
This week’s releases
- Album of the week
- Recommended albums out now
- More new albums out now
- EPs out today
- Also released today
Album of the week
Radie Peat – No Human Tongue Can Tell
Dublin singer and musician Radie Peat, best known as a member of Lankum and ØXN, releases her debut solo album on Rough Trade Records, made with Lankum producer and ØXN bandmate John ‘Spud’ Murphy. The idea had been ticking away for 15 years, since she watched a documentary about Mike Oldfield making Tubular Bells and wanted to try recording “where you write and play all the intersecting parts”.
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Its nine folk songs with a heavy atmosphere, among them ‘Hares on the Mountain’, ‘The Moon and Stars’ and ‘Still I Love Him’, are largely about female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance, with love and all its complications never far away. ‘The Moon and Stars’ carries coded references to unwanted pregnancy and draws on John B. Keane’s Sive, while ‘Still I Love Him’ was found by John Francis Flynn in the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Peat’s contralto sits at the centre of doom-laden arrangements throughout, and it remains a voice like no other in Irish music. She plays Vicar Street in Dublin on Friday November 20th.
Recommended albums out now
Robocobra Quartet – Hundred Pieces
Belfast experimental collective Robocobra Quartet release their 100-song album today, five hours of music that began as an off-hand joke and became a composition in itself, inspired by Marina Abramović’s durational art and her memoir Walk Through Walls. Led by drummer, vocalist and producer Chris W Ryan, the band move from abrasive saxophone blasts and post-hardcore miniatures to dub mixes and ambience, with singles ‘Haha’ and ‘Nothing’ laboured over for months and other songs captured in minutes. “I’m excited to have this record exist as an artefact of our cheeky and playful ambition,” says Ryan. A ten-track vinyl edition, Ten Easy Pieces, follows on Friday March 5th, before shows at Bello Bar, Dublin on Friday March 12th and The MAC, Belfast on Saturday March 13th. Ambitious, funny and unlike anything else out this week.
Earfzilla – THE AFTER GLOW
Dublin rapper Earfzilla has had a fast 2026, with a run of singles from the same Irish underground rap world as deathtoricky, and a video for ‘vintage vuitton’ that passed half a million views in a fortnight. His new mixtape arrives with features from callhermyex, xanjeli, gonelikesum and mayday, plus one secret guest. Production comes from Lucan Community Center, rafewav, sirmoio, typhelicia, proderics and 1pepreme, with mixing and mastering by ohsurvival and cover art by Earfzilla himself. Woozy, chiptune-flecked cloud rap from a newcomer who has in recent weeks featured in Teen Vogue, On The Radar and PlaqueboyMax’s stream (which has odd American Idol vibes).
Bell X1 – Good Bones
Paul Noonan, David Geraghty and Dominic Phillips release their ninth studio album, the first they have made with producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, The Hold Steady, Josh Ritter). Its 12 songs were recorded in 10 intense days at Dreamland, a deconsecrated 1895 church in upstate New York, shortly after the death of the band’s friend and live bandmate Glenn Keating. “The act of making music in the wake of that was a very emotional and intense process,” says Noonan. The title nods to Keating’s nickname, ‘G Bone’. It is a warm, earthy and intimate record, and among the band’s most delicate. They play Vicar Street in Dublin from November 27th to 29th, Cork’s Savoy on December 4th and 5th, then Derry, Belfast and Killarney in December.
Blackhaine – Saints In The Wethouse
North west England rapper, experimental musician and choreographer Blackhaine (Thomas Heyes) releases his debut album on XL Recordings, six years on from the Armour EP on Rainy Miller’s Fixed Abode label. Mostly realised in studio by Heyes with executive producer Wraith9 (EsDeeKid, Fakemink), it features Rainy Miller, Croww and Space Afrika, with contributions from Ship Sket, Vanessa Bedoret and Gabe Evans. The label describes “a 12-track gut punch of drunken confession and brawling swagger”, moving from the power electronics of ‘Northside Needs Me’ to the bare ballad ‘The Wind’ and an eight-minute title track closer. Bleak, heavy and uncompromising, rap noise with an industrial folk heart.
Daire Heffernan – Sundeath
Dublin-born, Belfast-based singer-songwriter Daire Heffernan releases her debut album independently, following the Wasters EP (2022) and The Wolf Called Desire EP (2024). Produced by Darragh McDonnell and Tailtiu, mixed by McDonnell and Chris Ryan (Robocobra Quartet) and begun in Gortahork, Donegal in January 2025, its 13 tracks deal with the loss of her father when she was 12. “I had to give language to what I couldn’t back then,” she says.
“The album is about grief, and how it has shaped my life for better and for worse. Experiencing the loss of my dad at 12 was like losing a pillar of my life, and suddenly I didn’t know the world anymore. I felt so many things that I couldn’t put to words at the time. I had to go back to that time and remember the anger, the shame, the guilt, the loss, and even the relief I had felt. I had to give language to what I couldn’t back then, and put sound to the wailing and screaming I can’t do everyday. This is my grief, paired with moments of relishing in the beautiful things that wouldn’t have happened had I not gone through this. The album is like being sucked into this massive life transition and spat out the other side, and listening is a walk through that experience with me.”
Singles ‘Hunter, Archer’ and ‘Cogs’ wrap her folk songwriting in what she calls a “digital blanket” of electronics, with Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell a stated influence. A heavy subject handled with care.
Armand Hammer – Snakes & Ladders
New York rap duo Armand Hammer, billy woods and ELUCID, surprise-released their new album on Wednesday through Backwoodz Studioz and Rhymesayers, a year on from Mercy with The Alchemist. Written and recorded last winter to a strict self-imposed deadline, with more songs made together in the same room than on any of their previous records, its 16 tracks are produced by clipping., Kenny Segal, Sebb Bash, Preservation, Child Actor, Messiah Musik and Saint Abdullah & Eomac among others, with guests DJ Haram and $ilkmoney. “We’re going to record in this moment about everything that we’re feeling right now,” woods told POW Magazine. It closes with ‘if we must die’, named after the Claude McKay poem. Urgent, knotty rap that documents the present tense.
More new albums out now
U2 – Carnaval De Luz
50 years on from Larry Mullen Jr.’s note on the Mount Temple noticeboard, U2 release their 16th studio album, and first of new material in nine years, on Island Records. Produced by Jacknife Lee, its 12 songs follow this year’s Days of Ash and Easter Lily EPs, with Brian Eno co-writing and playing synths on three tracks, Martin Garrix co-writing ‘Glorify’, Ryan Tedder adding production to the surf-punk ‘Silencio’, a song about Rosalía called ‘The Mirror Maker’ and Daniel Lanois on pedal steel for ‘Torn’, a closing duet with Dolly Parton. The Edge calls it “a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs”. A stadium world tour begins in 2027 with no Irish dates yet, though the band say it will finish at home. More of a “what-do-U2-sound-like-in-2026” listen for me than something I’m really excited about hearing.
Listen: YouTube
Snoh Aalegra – Legendary Love
Swedish-Iranian, LA-based singer Snoh Aalegra returns with her first album since 2021’s Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies, released independently through Stem. Written over two and a half years about one karmic relationship, it was made with longtime collaborator Joel Compass and Josh Grant using vintage synths, drum machines and guitars, with contributions from Babyface, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Raphael Saadiq, Nile Rodgers, Mustafa, Dahi and Daniel Caesar. “I don’t think the greatest love stories are measured by how long they last. They’re measured by who they ask you to become,” she says. Lush, grown-up R&B with serious pedigree behind it.
Listen: YouTube
2hollis – Pirouette
Out since Wednesday, the fifth album in five years from 22-year-old rapper, singer and producer 2hollis follows last year’s major label debut Star. Its 16 tracks were written and produced largely by 2hollis himself, with additional production from Mk.gee, Skai, Ginseng and Andrew Aged, and no guest vocalists. “The narration is through the eyes of a being named One,” he says of its “sixteen vignettes”, which concern “love in its most beautiful, desperate, destructive & tender forms”. The cover was hand-drawn by Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano, and the singles were ‘Hurt’, ‘Sex’ and ‘Warhorse’. Maximalist, lovesick pop-rap from an artist now booking arenas.
Listen: YouTube
20th Century Paddy – The Songs Of Shane MacGowan
Named after an album Shane MacGowan long wanted to make himself, this 36-track tribute on Rubyworks was curated with his wife Victoria Mary Clarke and sister Siobhan MacGowan. The cast runs from Bruce Springsteen on ‘A Rainy Night in Soho’ and Tom Waits on ‘Summer in Siam’ to Primal Scream, The Libertines and The Pogues themselves, alongside a deep Irish contingent: U2, Hozier and Jessie Buckley on ‘Fairytale of New York’, Lisa O’Neill, The Murder Capital, Madra Salach, Damien Dempsey, Kingfishr, Moya Brennan and more. The Edge says of MacGowan, “His songs sound like they have always existed”. A share of artist royalties goes to Dublin Simon Community. With 36 songs it is uneven by design, but the songbook holds up.
The Expert & Donwill – Expertise
Dublin producer The Expert follows last year’s Vivid Visions with a full-length collaboration with Donwill of US rap group Tanya Morgan, out on HipNott Records. The pair first worked together on The Overview Effect, then on ‘Zambezi Zinger’ from Ritual and the posse cut ‘Take A Trip’. Fully produced by The Expert, the 13 tracks are Donwill’s first album in seven years and feature Shad, MC Paul Barman, Homeboy Sandman, Von Pea, Rob Cave and Jermiside. “Every single time we have worked together it has felt so natural,” says The Expert. Psych-tinged boom-bap from a producer on a strong run.
Listen: Bandcamp
Aesop Rock & Blockhead – Trouble Mountain
Rapper Aesop Rock and producer Blockhead met at Boston University in the 1990s and have worked together since Aesop’s 1997 debut, but this Rhymesayers release is only their second fully collaborative album, after 2021’s Garbology. Loosely inspired by the Poconos resort ads the pair saw on TV as kids in New York, its 17 tracks feature Open Mike Eagle, Hanni El Khatib, Cavalier, Baby Dayliner and 4-IZE. “Trouble Mountain is me and Blockhead’s (fake) Ski Lodge,” says Aesop. “Anything can happen.” Dense, funny and dependable indie rap from two of the genre’s lifers.
Listen: YouTube
Westside Gunn – HEELMATIC
Buffalo rapper and Griselda founder Westside Gunn releases his first album for Mass Appeal, following last year’s Heels Have Eyes 2 and 2026 guest spots with A$AP Rocky and Erykah Badu & The Alchemist. The 16-track record keeps up his wrestling fixation in titles like ‘Koke Slam’ and ‘Tommy Heelfiger’, and was introduced by the Denny LaFlare-produced ‘Zilla’, whose video has him riding a camel to the Pyramids. Expect luxury raps, ad-libs and grimy loops delivered with his usual flair. Westside plays Vicar Street in February.
Listen: YouTube
peter o sullivan – the best i can do
Cork-based songwriter peter o sullivan, originally from a tourist town on the south-east coast, releases his second album as the first record on Smoke Fills The Air, a new label from Matthew Xavier Corrigan (fka Ghostking Is Dead) and Colm Cahalane. The 14 tracks were made between Liverpool, in the home studio of Clean Cut Kid’s Mike Halls, and London, Cork, Newry and Dungarvan, with field recordings and room tone left in. Alex Gough and John McDowell are among the contributors, and ‘time still’ is a duet with All Things Eve. The label says he writes songs “like he is trying to make himself the corner of a room and take you there with him”. Delicate, closely observed songwriting for fans of Fionn Regan and David Kitt.
Listen: Bandcamp
Dani Larkin – Next Of Kin (The Bedroom Tapes)
Out since Thursday on Wipe Out Music, Belfast-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Dani Larkin revisits her album Next Of Kin, released in January and shortlisted for Album of the Year at the NI Music Prize, with an acoustic version. Where the original was co-produced with Ruth O’Mahony Brady, these are one-take recordings of guitar and voice. “Bare bones, guitar and voice recorded without any effects. Just a mic and me,” she says. Larkin plays the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast on Sunday November 15th and Other Voices in Dingle on November 29th. Her rich voice needs little else.
Listen: YouTube
Aphex Twin – Drukqs (Expanded Edition)
Richard D. James’s wild 30-track opus gets its first vinyl pressing since 2001 through Warp, completing his Aphex Twin catalogue on vinyl. It’s a 45 RPM 4xLP set in a gatefold, with 2xCD and double cassette versions, and a limited box set with a poster and stencil from the AFX store. From detailed breakcore to the prepared piano of ‘Avril 14th’, it still sounds like nothing else.
Kalia Vandever & Dave Harrington – Evergreen
A joint album from trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever and guitarist Dave Harrington of Darkside, released on Sudden Quarterly. The pair connected when Vandever opened for Darkside last year, and the record was made over three days in Los Angeles in February. It arrives in a busy year for both, after Vandever’s Mana in June and Harrington’s Isle Of Palms with Tim Mislock. Ten tracks from two exploratory players meeting in the middle.
Listen: YouTube
Jan St. Werner – Squares Will Fall
Jan St. Werner of Mouse On Mars releases a three-piece record on Thrill Jockey, his first under his own name since 2023’s Space Synthesis. The title track began in 2012 as a 30-minute electronic composition, became an improvisation with Justin Vernon during Mouse On Mars’ Dimensional People sessions, and was finished this year with Vernon on vocals, Kid Millions on drums, Beirut’s Zach Condon on trumpet and Ben Lanz on trombone. Sufjan Stevens plays drum machine on ‘Flötotto’. Dense, playful electronic music with an unusually starry cast.
Listen: Bandcamp
Trentemøller – Trentemøller
Copenhagen producer and multi-instrumentalist Anders Trentemøller follows 2024’s Dreamweaver with a self-titled album on his own In My Room label, which he wrote, played, produced and mixed himself. For the first time, every track has a guest vocalist: Jonas Bjerre of Mew, Sune Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes, Anika, Midwife, Sakura, Tan Cologne and his live band singer Emma Acs. “The noisy got noisier, the dreamy got dreamier, the melodic got even more melodic,” he says. It’s a long way from the electronic music he made his name with, landing instead on loud, bruising shoegaze and dream-pop.
Listen: YouTube
Los Bitchos – Los Bitchos & Friends Vol 1
London-based instrumental trio Los Bitchos (Serra Petale, Josefine Jonsson and Nic Crawshaw) release their third album on GREAT! Records with !K7 Music, following 2022’s Let The Festivities Begin! and 2024’s Talkie Talkie. For the first time, the band bring in vocalists and guests: Sinkane and Adrian Quesada on ‘Hang Up (Pt 2)’, Ambrose Kenny-Smith of King Gizzard on ‘Holding Cell’, Kit Sebastian on ‘El Pençe’ and Chicha Libre on ‘Conexiones’. The voice is treated as texture: “I don’t even mind what I’m singing, it’s how I’m singing it,” says Petale. They play Opium in Dublin on Monday February 1st 2027. It’s a cumbia-psych party.
Listen: YouTube
Kim Deal – Live at the Barbican
The Breeders and former Pixies musician Kim Deal took her 2024 solo debut Nobody Loves You More to London’s Barbican in March 2025 for her first ever show with an orchestra, and 4AD now release the recording alongside a concert film. Backed by her band, a 25-piece orchestra and the Shards choir, the 18-song set covers the solo album, Breeders songs like ‘Safari’, ‘Off You’ and ‘Do You Love Me Now?’, and earlier solo singles, with Teenage Fanclub’s Raymond McGinley guesting on two tracks. “I invited myself!” Deal says of how the show came about. A warm, widescreen document of a great songwriter enjoying herself.
Listen: Bandcamp
There is an Island – There is an Island
Dublin folk trio There is an Island, Michelle O’Rourke (voice), Garrett Sholdice (piano and voice) and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly (violin, guitar and voice), release their self-titled debut on Ergodos. Recorded with producer Adrian Hart over four days in Skreen Parish Church in West Sligo in 2018 and mixed this year, it chronicles a decade of slow evolution for the group, which the label describes as “a collection of hushed invocations, oceanic lullabies and haunting melodies”. An orchestral version of ‘Dust’ with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra closes the record. They launch it at Hen’s Teeth in Dublin tonight with guest harpist Méabh McKenna. One for the still hours.
Listen: Bandcamp
Land of Talk – LASTS
Montreal band Land of Talk, the project of Elizabeth Powell, release their sixth album on Saddle Creek, the follow-up to 2023’s Performances. Powell wrote it while dealing with music industry burnout and worry about ageing parents, and its eight songs take in abuse in the industry, the mortality of loved ones and Powell’s identity as a non-binary person. “Life can become so unbearable, and music is where I go to metabolise it,” says Powell, who calls the record a love letter to life. Warm, live-in-the-room indie-rock.
Listen: YouTube
DJ Heartstring – Sentimental Ultra
Berlin duo DJ Heartstring, Jonas and Leo, release their debut album via Steel City Dance Discs, the label home of Galway’s KETTAMA, on whose debut album they guested. Across 15 tracks, they fold indie rock, rap, ambient and breakbeat into their emotional, trance-leaning club sound, with guests including Sam Gellaitry, DMA’S, KennyHoopla, SWIM and Irish producer Spriitzz, who features on the title track. They play the Telegraph Building in Belfast on Saturday November 28th. Big-hearted rave music with a noughties indie streak.
Listen: Bandcamp
Cormac O Caoimh – Heartbreakers
Cork singer-songwriter Cormac O Caoimh releases his seventh studio album, following Swim Crawl Walk Run and Where the World Begins. Started in 2024 as a ten-song record and released a single at a time, it grew to 15 tracks when five B-sides tried out on his “gig a month forever” tour earned a place, with mixing and mastering by Adam Whitaker. The touchstones are The Go-Betweens, Prefab Sprout and Nick Drake. He plays a MusicZone instore on November 20th and Myrtleville Music Club on December 2nd. Melodic, intimate guitar pop from a dependable craftsman.
Listen: Bandcamp
Bring Your Own Hammer – From the Tombs
Bring Your Own Hammer is a music and history project curated by MIC Limerick historian Dr Richard Mc Mahon, pairing songwriters with archival sources. Its second album, a 21-track double LP on Dimple Discs, takes on crime, law and order in 19th-century Ireland and the Irish diaspora, moving from the west of Ireland to New York, Argentina and Australia across four themed sides. The cast includes Cian Nugent, Adrian Crowley, Brigid Mae Power, Linda Buckley, Inni-K, Seán Mac Erlaine, Fergal Lawler of The Cranberries, Sean O’Hagan, Bernard Butler and Luke Haines, taking in indie-pop, folk ballads, sean-nós and cinematic instrumentals. Butter witches, conmen and convict ships all feature. A sprawling, curious listen that makes the archive sing.
Listen: Bandcamp
Eoin Dolan – Weekender
Out since Wednesday on Galway’s Rón Records, the seventh album from songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Eoin Dolan is inspired by characters and stories from his upbringing in the seaside suburb of Renmore, covering escapism, loss and resilience. Known for Beach Boys-leaning psych-pop, he moves towards alternative country here, citing Gram Parsons, The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, with lap steel from Jethro Pickett and banjo from Alan Walsh alongside regular players Conor Deasy, James Casserly and Adam Sheeran. A warm left turn from a consistent West of Ireland voice.
Listen: YouTube
Hiroshi Yoshimura – Quiet Forest
Japanese ambient composer Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1996 album gets a 30th anniversary reissue from Temporal Drift, its first release on vinyl and cassette and its first CD reissue. The last full-length he released before his death in 2003, it was inspired by his first trip to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park “felt like seeing a whole new world for the first time in my life”. The basic tracks were recorded in autumn 1993, and the label calls it a spiritual follow-up to Green from a decade earlier. Remastered from the original sources by John Baldwin in cooperation with Yoshimura’s estate, it comes with English translations of the 1996 liner notes. Ten pieces of unhurried environmental music, back in print.
Listen: Bandcamp
Squid – CROWDS
Out since Monday on Warp, the first live album from English band Squid was recorded across three nights of last year’s UK headline tour for Cowards. Its 11 tracks draw on all three of their albums, Bright Green Field, O Monolith and Cowards, with guest performances from Rosa Brook, Martha Skye Murphy and Zands Duggan. It was recorded on the road by Mark Scurr and mixed by Tortoise’s John McEntire. “Our 2025 tour of Cowards took us somewhere new in what we can do together,” say the band. The vinyl follows on Friday December 4th, the day before they play London’s Barbican for Rough Trade’s 50th birthday. A 14-minute ‘Narrator’ is the centrepiece.
Listen: Bandcamp
EPs out today
Bucket – Muck / Mosaic
Dublin experimental noise-rock trio Bucket get their first vinyl release, with debut EP Muck (2025) and this year’s Mosaic paired on a limited red/black marble 12″ in Dinked’s Early Doors series. Muck, recorded live at Black Mountain Studios in Dundalk, collides garage, noise and hardcore, while Mosaic, co-produced with James Eager (Lankum, The Scratch), adds breakbeats and electronics on ‘DNB’ and ‘Memento’. Nine tracks from a band regularly billed as Dublin’s loudest, with new single ‘Strung Out’ out now too.
Listen: YouTube
Also released today
- Benny The Butcher – A Friend Of Ours 2
- Holly Humberstone – Cruel World… So It Ends
- James Felice – Homeworld Blue
- Menahan Street Band – Illusions
- Marcel Dettmann – My Own Shadow Album
- silt. – brain like a silent hill EP
- The Clash – The World According to The Clash
- Danny Brown – Atrocity Exhibition (10th Anniversary Edition)
- The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics (20th Anniversary Edition)
- Jessie Ware – Superbloom (Deluxe Edition)
- MUNA – Dancing On The Wall (Deluxe Edition)
- Puma Blue – Croak Deluxe
- Talking Heads – Fear of Music (Super Deluxe Edition)
- Tara Cunningham – Warm Ground
- Wavves – Cherry Soda
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. Niall is the chost 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 host of monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
