Best of 2025 | Albums | Guestlists | Irish Albums | Irish songs |
Previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019….
As I mark 20 years of Nialler9 existing this year, a revisit to the early best of and end of year roundups reminded me that I only started sharing my own list of Irish albums of the year in 2016, the previous ten years were all Irish albums and songs readers polls.
In revisiting that first 2016 list, I noticed my problem has remained the same – in focusing on my favourite Irish albums of the year, there are perennially albums that are other people’s favourites which don’t feature anywhere on mine and some which surprise myself where they place even if included.
After all, I made a list of 80 recommended Irish albums released this year, this is always going to be an issue.
It simply means there’s a big batch of Irish artists doing wonderful long-form creative and artistically moving things in music and a placing in the 20s or 30s or up is not a pity inclusion or box tick, just indicative of the wide-ranging accomplished variety of Irish music that exists that moved me, there’s only room for what I authentically love, as otherwise what’s the point?
The 50 best Irish albums of 2025
50 – 31:
50. Slightly Dishevelled – Dirty Dishes And The West Wing
49. Biig Piig – 11:11
48. Caimin Gilmore – BlackGate
47. Amanda Feery – NEST
46. The Expert – Vivid Visions
45. bog band – Mocashno Days
44. Inni-K – Still A Day
43. Dove Ellis – Blizzard
42. Tebi Rex – Fin
41. The Altered Hours – The Altered Hours
40. J Smith – I Stood there Naked
39. DUG – Have At It!
38. Jinx Lennon – The Hate Agents Leer At The Last Isle Of Hope
37. Search Results – Go Mutant
36. Cormac Begley & Liam O Connor – Into the Loam
35. Jehnova, Luthorist, Visionali – Dangerous Currents
34. Elaine Mai – For Us
33. Unique Freaks (THEE U.F.O) – Enjoyment Planted
32. T-Woc – Scenes, Journeys & Color
31. Travy – Spooky
30.
Varo
The World That I Knew
The Dublin duo of Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi aka Varo released an album this past May featuring a huge cast of their friends and contemporaries in Irish folk and traditional music.
The collaborative album was five years in the making and features a who’s who of Irish musicians in the folk and trad arena including Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen.
lbumoftheyear.org/releases/
29.
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”. The album may yet be seein as fulcrum for the future of Curtisy’s work, with the artists trying on different styles and moods in a relaxed mixtape setting that suggest there’s much more variety to come from the lad.
28.
Maykay
Maykay
The Fight Like Apes singer Maykay has long guested on other people’s records. From her time singing with Le Galaxie to regular collaborations with Jerry Fish, Mik Pyro and Elaine Mai, MayKay has regularly kept up her singing personality on record and live, as well as developing her hosting duty skills on Other Voices for the last 10 years.
The Irish artist finally released a debut solo album after 20 years playing music, a record informed and about relationships in all their forms and musically. The songs are informed by toxic men, tumultuous dating experiences, relationship regret, forgiveness and the influential presence of her recently deceased dad, who informs the album’s poignant closing elegy ‘Funerals’, with Maykay writing lovingly about their bond of enjoying such morbid occasions.
Maykay is a rock record, a pop LP, an alternative album, an indie release, a blues album, with electro-pop and everything in-between.
It’s a novelty to hear MayKay trying on different hats, and on an album with more traditional productions than the “no-guitar” ruleset synthpop of her Fight Like Apes past, but if there’s anyone who can bring these disparate styles together it’s Maykay, whose vibrant voice and shades presented in it, are a suitable foil for Ian MacFarlane’s varied arrangements.
27.
Joshua Burnside
Teeth of Time
Belfast-based singer-songwriter Joshua Burnside leans into the lush fingerpicked folk sound he’s been increasingly embodying of late, with nods to Irish traditional music, and electronic textures, that add up to his best and most natural album thus far.
Burnside imbues these songs with his recent experiences of becoming a dad, and the liminal times between looking after a child and living a new family life, with feelings of gratification, anxiety and fear.
26.
Sprints
All That Is Over
The Dublin alt-garage-rock band Sprints’ second album (on City Slang worldwide and Sub Pop for North America) continues the explosive and cathartic sonic style that they established on their debut, 2024’s Letter To Self.
All That Is Over spends its first two songs building the tautness and tension before the dam bursts into high energy noise-rock on ‘Descartes’, and Karla Chubb lets her vocal loose.
The album came during a whirlwind of touring with Karla Chubb hitting a purple patch of songwriting and the Daniel Fox-produced album settles into a rollicking mood throughout its middle with songs like ‘Rage’, ‘Beg’ and ‘Pieces’, that give the album a discernible immediacy, without quite matching wide-ranging lyrical depth of their debut.
25.
Paddy Hanna
Oylegate
Dublin singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna gave up music in the couple of years before this album was made. Family and friends convinced him to keep at it, and producer and collaborator Daniel Fox also encouraged this fifth album, after a trad-style album was abandoned. And we are glad he was convinced to come back to it.
Oylegate was written while watching Solaris with the sound off at home, on piano and it features Hanna’s trademark classic songwriting-tinged craft, including the superlative 80s soul pop of ‘Harry Dean’ and the jaunty parenthood-inspired ‘Oylegate Station’ – alongside songs that have a “contrast of warmth and detachment, of intimate revelation and surreal detour.”
Paddy Hanna: a track-by-track on Oylegate – his new album that nearly never got made
24.
Junk Drawer
Days Of Heaven
Belfast alternative psych-rock band Junk Drawer’s second album on Pizza Pizza Records is the sound of a band doubling down on what makes them tick, through a rounded collection of their best songs yet.
The album was recorded over seven days at The Meadow Studios in Wicklow with producer Chris Ryan and is Junk Drawer’s “attempt to make a work of weird, cosmic Ulster music… taking inspiration from the way Gram Parsons, The Byrds, Grateful Dead and the likes created a language and pathway for cosmic American music by drinking in what came before and spitting it out via the inherited angst of growing up in a post-war world.”
23.
NewDad
Altar
Galway indie-rock band NewDad return with assured and confident followup to their debut album Madra.
Altar was written over the last two years after leaving Galway for London, the anguish of that move sometimes explored in the lyrics along with relationships, homesickness, ambition and sacrifice “and finds the trio grappling with the life they left behind in exchange for the promise of chasing their dreams”.
Altar continues the band’s confident forays into honed alternative rock, which is at their best when things get more raucous and tense.
22.
Ólafur Arnalds, Talos
A Dawning
A beautiful collaborative full album between Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Cork’s Eoin French of Talos who sadly passed away last summer. It’s impossible to listen to this record without knowing the weight of that loss that was felt by his collaborator, family and friends, and it’s still a tough listen for those of us who didn’t know him too well but appreciated his presence and artistry. A Dawning is a celebration of a singular person.
In Ólafur’s words – “a profound meditation on friendship, loss and experimentation.” A Dawning is both a fitting document to a fruitful creative partnership of two-like-minded souls, and honours Eoin French’s songcraft and a celebration of his alchemic songwriting. Both found kinship in their ability to write profoundly deep-well writing that draws on cinematic soundscapes and ambient touches.
It was finished by Arnalds after French passed with the help of friends Sandrayati and Alexi Murdoch with the closing song ‘We Didn’t Know We Were Ready’, is both a deeply moving celebration of Eoin’s life and an ode to the spark of creativity that makes a song soar.
Arnalds talked to me for the podcast earlier this year about his friendship with Eoin.
21.
Kean Kavanagh
The County Star
Despite the release of Dog Person in 2020 (now retroactively called a mixtape), The County Star is billed as Kean Kavanagh’s debut album with the Soft Boy artist embracing a hometown inspiration of Portlaoise (as seen in the trilogy of Peter McGann–starring videos) for this more colloquial sounding indie and rock record with inspirations from Americana (Kean was born in Houston, Texas as it happens) and Irish folk.
There’s no doubt Kavanagh has taken a leap both sonically, lyrically and artistically with this fine debut album, and there’s joy to be found in the full embrace of his home county lore and accent.
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.
No OReilly and Higgins?
Love the Varo and Throwing Shapes.
Even the ex-Prez has to lose out occasionally.
No love for The Swell Season???
Not a Glen Hansard fan.
No David Keenan ?