Best of 2025 | Albums | Guestlists | Irish Albums | Irish songs |
20.
Laura Duff
Sea Legs
Limerick songwriter and musician Laura Duff released a debut album of introspective songwriting drawing from experiences of grief at the passing of her father and draws from good memories and experiences of being by the sea.
At times, it’s devastating in how it plaintively underscores parental loss through simple recollections and the gulf of experience between then and now.
19.
Maria Kelly
Waiting Room
The Mayo singer-songwriter’s second album on VETA records is the followup to 2021’s debut The Sum of the In-between.
Mental health is a big theme of the record, with the title referencing the very real place Maria spent time in while seeking answers for chronic pain, along with a metaphorical place of her inner world.
It was recorded between the Start Together Studio in Belfast and Black Mountain Studios in Dundalk, and features a collection of long-time friends and collaborators: co-producer and co-writer Matt Harris (HAVVK, Birthday Problem), drummers Hannah Hiemstra (Rachael Lavelle, Rival Sisters) and Nigel Kenny (Bitch Falcon), vocalist Julie Hough (HAVVK, PostLast), mixer Rocky O’Reilly (Oppenheimer) and others.
“This album is an exploration of the roadblocks, both internally and externally, that keep us feeling powerless and taking away our agency,” Maria says. The record also touches on the housing crisis, societal expectations, faded friendships and more.
18.
Ian Nyquist
Gilded
The Dublin sound artist composer Ian Nyquist’s album explores the beating heart at traditional Irish music – the handheld drum we call the bodhrán, by recasting it as source material for electronic compositions, techniques, modelling software and sounds throughout the record.
The bodhrán is transformed and refracted through these productions with an airy and icy feel, underscored by the album artwork, with ‘serpent’ an example of the percussive glacial bounce made from it, more analogous to Aphex Twin than Altan and ‘ourouboros’ an ambient techno time-shifting aurora borealis.
The mostly instrumental work, released on Flood, a label originally known for its “hard drum” electronic sound, does deign to bring in voices to sing – one original Laucan on the dreamy twinkling ‘What Else Am I For?’ and two traditional tunes – Glasgow singer lona Zajac closes the record with a woozy reality-seam-shifting version of ‘Leis a’bháta Dhubh Dharaich (The Black Oaken Boat)’, while Cork sean-nós singer Lorcán Mac Mathúna sings the 18th-century love song, ‘Úna Bhán (Fair Una)’ enveloped in brooding noise.
Alongside the work of Róis, Lullahush and most recently Bricknasty, Ian Nyquist is the latest in a spade of Irish artists recontextualising trad music into new forms.
17.
M(h)aol
Something Soft
The Irish post-punk band based in Dublin, Belfast, and London released their second album on Merge Records.
Something Soft is a a collection of razor-sharp visceral punk songs that mostly let the noise do the shaking, with Constance Keane’s vocals (and Jamie Hyland) adding subtle meaning to the band’s elemental fury.
16.
Just Mustard
WE WERE JUST HERE
The third album from Dundalk alternative rockers Just Mustard released on Partisan Records is the follow up to 2018’s Wednesday and their 2022 Partisan Records debut Heart Under.
The band’s trademark metallic and monochrome sonics are very much in place, along with a wider emotional depth, in contrast to the preoccupations of grief and longing.
WE WERE JUST HERE is “inspired by club spaces and physical joy, the songs strive for immediacy and feeling,” and much of their appeal remains the contrast soaring melodies of Katie Ball and the tense noise-scraping instrumentals that snake beneath her voice, the magnetic push and pull of striving for warmth and connection in a fumbling cold world.
The band play 3Olympia Theatre on May 1st 2026 and there is an extensive tour schedule.
15.
Olan Monk
Songs for Nothing
Connemara artist Olan Monk’s Songs for Nothing album, on the AD93 label, features songs of gothic and metallic rock, artful songs informed by cloud rap, witch house and traditional Irish slow airs. Fellow Galway artist Maria Somerville features on two tracks ‘Down 3’ and ‘Fate (Reprise’, along with other Irish neo-traditional experimentalists Michael Speers, Dylan Kerr, Aindriú De Buitléir, Risteárd O’hAodha and Róisín Berkeley.
The influence of his home place of Connemara, Galway’s wild west is like Somerville’s Luster, a chief inspiration, as is the songwriting of Sinead O’Connor.
Monk and collaborators bring tin whistle to drone rock, bringing a Bloody Valentine-esque fusion along with accordion and guitar drones on the album closer ‘Amhrán Mhaínse’. The tin whistle use throughout the record, is intended to highlight the disconnect Irish people have had from our own culture and language, while defending and celebrating our traditions.
14.
Poor Creature
All Smiles Tonight
If Lankum successfully merge the worlds of drone, black-metal and Irish folk then Poor Creature do the same with folk music with psych and sludge-rock sounds.
Featuring Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada along with John Dermody and vocals from Landless’ Ruth Clinton, Poor Creature’s music possesses a nebulous otherworldly atmosphere, with rising organs, skittering drums and unnerving howl-like sounds. Released in the summer, its beguiling and eerie takes on traditional tunes resonant deeper in the darker nights of now.
13.
Jordan Kelly
Diaspora Green Mixtape
Back when he was calling himself Jonen Dekay or Strange Boy Nature, Limerick artist Jordan Kelly made underground rap music, before his confessional trad rap music was met with much acclaim in recent years. Kelly has returned to that sound on this mixtape.
Diaspora Green is a breezy collection of rap cuts, with Kelly’s Limerick accent burning through the tracks like wildfire, and contrasts the trad-rooted style heard on his 2021 debut Holy / Unholy.
It features peers Karis Amber, aahronmm, God Knows, Hazey Haze, Dyrt, Citrus Fresh and Scruffy Munnelly, and was produced by Danny Lanham.
12.
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.
11.
pôt-pot
Warsaw 480km
The Cork/Lisbon band pôt-pot are inspired by psych and kosmische bands like Neu!, CAN, Spacemen 3 and the motorik beats and drones of those forebearers, and bring psych-rock sounds with harmonium drones and vocal harmonies and those influences are widely felt on their debut album.
They initially started as a solo project of Mark Waldron-Hyden before the rest of the members joined after meeting in Lisbon and band also features Mykle Oliver Smith, Joe Armitage, Elaine Malone (Mantua), Sara Leslie.
Primo psych and krautrock sounds.
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 ?