My recommended best long playing albums and records of the last month. This is what I listened to and loved the most.
Vince Staples – Cry Baby
The seventh album from the Long Beach rapper, picking up where 2024’s Dark Times left off. Vince Staples remains one of the smartest, driest and most quietly experimental voices in mainstream hip-hop, his production choices and conceptual framings always a few moves ahead of the conversation.
Cry Baby is a politically-charged album drawing on hip-hop, funk, soul and rock sounds with a live band backdrop. ‘The Big Bad Wolf’ features a Slick Rick sample and the songs are informed by racial and class injustice. So far, this sounds like a vital American rap record of 2026.
Chanel Beads – Your Day Will Come (Jagjaguwar)
A new release under the Chanel Beads name from Shane Lavers, the New York-based artist whose smear-on-tape, indie-pop-meets-glitched-electronic work has been one of the more singular voices in contemporary American underground music. The album has the same title as his 2024 debut that gave us the highlight keeper of ‘Police Scanner’.
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Lavers’ approach pulls warm guitar tones, dub-adjacent space and emotionally direct songwriting into one disarming spindly and melodic whole, and Your Day Will Come feels like his most direct statement yet.
Shamrock Showband – Shankhill Road Mission
The second album from one of my recent favourite discoveries, Shamrock Showband, the Irish showband country and western-inspired music, which I introduced with “if Father Ted and CMAT had a baby”.
The Belfast-based trio who make up Shamrock Showband are Conor McAuley, Jamie Bishop (aka MUCKNO), and Joel Harkin who hail from the border counties of Louth, Monaghan and Donegal respectively. They are a psychedelic country band built on a very specific kind of Irish sensibility.
It was the sublime earworm of ‘My Wee Car’ the song that opened up the Shamrock Showband portal for me and Shankhill Road Mission continues the band’s weirdo sham pop vibe whether its old-timey hoedowns about Cromwell and making your way to Castleblaney, lo-fi Cindy Lee-esque jams about fascists, interludes from the border town life that inspired the band and pedal-steel ditties about the Rory Gallagher statue in Ballyshannon in Donegal.
Shankhill Road Mission is filled with Bandcamp-adjacent country and western indie border music in spades.
This album is inspired by Belfast, Ulster, The Border, and the towns we come from.This album is inspired by the Showband Era, a sexier era than it gets credit for. An era that was cut short by the Brits and their war on Ireland because of it’s ability to bring people from different communities together.
yasiin bey / Mos Def – The Ecstatic (reissue)
I would deem this 2009 album the second best solo album of Mos Def’s career (now Yasiin Bey) after his seminal 1999 debut Black On Both Sides, and it arrived on Qobuz streaming for the first time ever this week.
When The Ecstatic was released it marked a return to form for the artist who was off making films and neglecting his rap career. The album features productions from Madlib, Oh No, J Dilla, The Neptunes, Preservation and Mr. Flash, a memorable turn from Slick Rick on ‘Auditorium’, Georgia Anne Muldrow on ‘Roses’ and his Black Star partner Talib Kweli on the Dilla-buttressed ‘History’.
If I was to take one song from this record, it would be the handclap and bass minimalist rap of ‘Quiet Dog Bit Hard’ which hits harder than most rap could dream of.
The Ecstatic is urgent and immediate – traversing sounds from around the globe centred on Madlib’s Indian-centred beats with a paranoia with the rapper moving through these varied beats with a consulate’s ease. Very much worth a reappraisal and relisten.
The album is streaming exclusively on Qobuz and available on vinyl. Bandcamp.
Tara Clerkin Trio – Somewhere Good
The new album from the Bristol-based experimental trio led by Tara Clerkin, following 2023’s much-loved On the Turning Ground. The Trio’s work moves through ambient, jazz, dub-adjacent atmospheres and quietly cracked-open vocal phrases, building one of the most distinctive sounds to come out of the UK underground in recent years. Somewhere Good should further cement their reputation as a band operating entirely on their own terms.
Styrofoam Winos – Any River
The new album from the Nashville indie-folk trio Styrofoam Winos, the project of Trevor Nikrant, Lou Turner and Joe Kenkel, each of whom maintains their own solo catalogue alongside this collective.
Their close-harmony songwriting carries clear echoes of the current axis of contemporary American folk and jangle indie, with the bonus chemistry of a band where three songwriters trade lead duties throughout. All three members have played in the Roadhouse Band with Ryan Davis and Will Oldham – Bonnie “Prince” Billy and MJ Lenderman are fans.
HAVVK – Time Will Kill
The fourth album from Irish alt-rock duo HAVVK, Julie Hawk and Matt Harris, who have spent the better part of a decade building one of the most singular grungy guitar sounds in Irish music. Their previous albums have moved between weighty, riff-led intensity and stripped-back vulnerability, and from the early singles Time Will Kill looks set to push deeper in both directions at once.
Time Will Kill is the kind of fourth album that sounds like a band growing fully into the noise they have been carrying for years.
We wanted to make something that addressed the feeling we both had that time is always running out”, members Julie Hough and Matt Harris explain. “Whether it is small trivial tasks that you don’t have time to finish, things you are passionate about that you don’t have time to fully explore, or things you see in the world that you want to try to help with but can’t find a way to prioritise to the point you feel like you are making a difference.”
“There’s so much that feels like it is going backwards in the world at the moment both close to home, with nationalistic movements in Ireland and the UK but also one global geopolitical crisis after the other. We have both felt a sense of guilt putting time into our personal interests while all of this is going on. These tracks are about working through that feeling in different ways; pausing and asking yourself, how are you actually using that time, whose pockets are you lining, and who are you actually looking out for?”
Alewya – Zero (Because Music)
The new album from Ethiopian-British artist Alewya, proper debut full-length from a singer, producer and visual artist who has spent the last few years building one of the more distinctive voices in UK alternative R&B. Alewya’s work pulls together North-East African rhythmic textures, club-adjacent electronic production and an unmistakable vocal presence, and Zero arrives with serious anticipation behind it.
Rattling Ark – Top of a Mountain
The debut album from Rattling Ark, the Irish alternative trad/folk/experimental project led by Slow Moving Clouds’ Kevin Murphy with Thomas Haugh, Lizzi Murtough and Aki.
The singles ‘Coleraine Jig’ and ‘Three Lovely Lassies from Bannion’ have been the ahead-of-album signposts for a project that treats Irish tradition as a starting point rather than a destination, pulling improvised textures and contemporary chamber-folk dynamics into the conversation with the through point of Pentangle, The Haxan Cloak and The Gloaming. On first listen, it sounds like a wonderful addition to the Irish album list this year.
- July 23 – University College Cork
- January 23 (2027) – Seamus Ennis Arts Centre, Dublin
Goldbug – Swings & Roundabouts
The self-titled debut album from the Irish artist Goldbug, the moniker of Dublin-based Irish/French artist Danilo Ward, who was raised in a religious commune in rural Provence that informs his work, along with his music background as bassist in Dublin dream pop band Of All Living Things.
Swings & Roundabouts was co-produced with Chris W Ryan (NewDad, Just Mustard) and mastered by Heba Kadry (Bjork, Big Thief), with influences touching Slint, Battles and Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden.
Goldbug’s writing has consistently sat in a space where indie songcraft, lush production and a real emotional directness meet, and the debut album is the first chance to hear all of that thinking pulled into one cohesive statement.
Loah – Materia Medica
The debut album from Sallay Garnett, LOAH, the Sierra Leonean-Irish singer-songwriter whose self-coined “ArtSoul” sound brings together jazz phrasing, alt-pop production and a vocal as central as anything in current Irish music. Materia Medica is her long-awaited debut album five years in the making.
The title for the record comes from an ancient pharmacology textbook about healing plants. Materia Medica draws on her friends and collaborators – it was co-produced with Brian Dillon (of Meltybrains? and The Line) and Daniel Forde. Alongside a song cowritten with Eoin French of Talos, guests include Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, her sister Fehdah, Gambian kora player Suntou Susso, harpist Allanah Thornbourgh, producer Ben Bix (Meltybrains?), drummer Dylan Lynch (Soda Blonde, Little Green Cars), and the Crash Ensemble amongst other musicians and producers, along with samples of 16th century lute music and Rachmaninoff to more contemporary sounds like 808 and Afrobeats.
“The ambition was to create a hypermodern body of work that sonically exemplifies the changing definition of what Irishness is, what femininity is and indeed what musical ‘genre’ is and its flexibility in the modern context. We have many excellent producers and musicians on this album – it is a collage of sound!
One of the earliest themes was around musical identity, ancient and modern – there are instruments such as kora (the ancient African harp), lavta (an ancient Mediterranean lute-like instrument), samples from 16th century lute music, Rachmaninoff, as well as 808 and Afrobeats! Other themes emerged – modern Irish womanhood, love, bereavement, spirituality, all of which are explored through the lens of an individual raised in two cultures.
We are in a dynamic and challenging world full of uncertainty. I see any act of creation at this time as raising the hope for an enlightened and unified approach to how we run our nation, and indeed how we run our planet. It is within this stirring context that I endeavoured to fuse seemingly disparate sonic and cultural identities to state my first case in album form as a unique Irish creator.”
Shark School – Selachimorpha (Strange Brew)
The debut album from Galway alt-garage-rock trio Shark School, out today via Strange Brew. The band have spent the last couple of years building a serious live following on the Irish circuit on the strength of their devastating, emotionally raw delivery, and the album is led by the searing single ‘5AM’ and ‘Don’t Trust A Man’ which brings metal power chords, abrasive industrial sounds to the fore.
One of the more urgent Irish guitar debuts of the year.
Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mouse on Mars – Spatial, No Problem
A long-anticipated collaboration finally arrived: the late, great Jamaican dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry, in his final studio sessions before his death in 2021, working with the German experimental electronic duo Mouse on Mars (Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma). Mouse on Mars’ restless playfulness and dub fluency finding a deep companion in Scratch’s open-ended cosmic vision. A record that lives up to the legacy of both artists.
ZASKA – Nectar
Wicklow bandleader Max Zaska returns with a friends-and-family collaborative record as is his ilk – with guest turns from Melina Malone, jarjarjr, Mik Pyro, Gemma Dunleavy, J Smith and Shiv.
Previous singles include ‘Play The Game’ and ‘Ever Cross My Mind’ – expect smooth full band soul and jazz with rap, expressive guitar licks and lifting voices – a ZASKA speciality.
Nectar Woode – Naturally
The debut mixtape from London-based Ghanaian-British singer-songwriter Nectar Woode, who has been building a strong following on the strength of her warmly soulful, folk-leaning songwriting and her unmistakable voice. Naturally is the long-awaited first proper full-length statement from an artist who has consistently sounded like one of the more emotionally precise new voices in UK soul. Fans of SAULT will dig this one.
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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.
