Best of 2025 | Albums | Guestlists | Irish Albums | Irish songs |
35.
Soda Blonde
The Queen Of Mercy
Dublin band Soda Blonde have form in Fleetwood Mac-esque alternative pop bangers and here’s another, along with a great video by the band’s own Adam O’Regan.
“I’m what you’d call one of the worst wives ever,” is a great line in another great song from the Soda Blonders, who released the People Pleaser EP and a live album accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra too.
34.
Poor Creature
All Smiles Tonight
Featuring Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada along with John Dermody and vocals from Landless’ Ruth Clinton, Poor Creature’s folk, psych and sludged songs have had a nebulous otherworldly atmosphere, with rising organs, skittering drums and unnerving howl-like sounds.
‘All Smiles Tonight’ features a supernatural feel with a haunted take on a traditional song
33.
Spriitzz, Spray
Where R U (Ibiza Mix)
Berlin-based Sligo dance producer Tiarnan McMorrow aka Spray brings ’90s rave bounce, akin to the euphoria of like Opus III and Strike colliding with a Balearic sunset, with an vocal sample from Orbital-esque Irish dance tune from Erotixs.
“When I wrote it I was in Ibiza,” he explains. “And I wanted to make something that sounded like it could have been on an Ibiza sunrise compilation CD. One of those one-off tracks by an artist you can’t find any other music by. It’s a bit of an ode to an old Ibiza that I romanticize that doesn’t really exist any more but I’m still always chasing when I visit.”
“The vocals came from an old Irish dance track,” McMorrow explains. “The kind of trance vocals I chase always have a small flavour of Celtic sounds in it and this one scratched that itch perfectly – it’s a really nice balance between haunting and hopeful.”
Spray is also releasing new music under the Spriitzz alias. “Spray for the club, Spriitzz for the sunset,” he explains of the two monikers.
32.
The Null Club
Slip Angle (featuring Valentine Caulfield)
Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan Borges debuted the new project The Null Club, with features from Mandy, Indiana’s Valentine Caulfield. Faris Badwan of The Horrors and ELUCID of Armand Hammer.
‘Slip Angle’ is a frantic mirage of noise and techno rock sounds anchored by Caulfield’s French language-whispered vocals.
31.
Pebbledash
Oh The Wind
The Cork shoegaze and alternative rock band Pebbledash had an output of consistent quality this year, as heard on the To Cast the Sea in Concrete EP.
‘O The Wind’ has nods to a traditional Irish music style in the vocals of Asha Egan McCutcheon, while holding a restrained but disquieting arrangement alongside it.
30.
mischa and the bear
Deny
mischa and the bear are Dublin-based duo, made up of producer/bassist Mischa (Danny Rooney) and vocalist Bear (Fírinne McIntyre). Rooney was formerly of the indie pop band modernlove.
‘Deny’ is their synth pop debut single, an electroclash hyper-pop tune in the vein of Crystal Castles. Its bleepy production and witch-house mood vocals are drawing on that moody indie sleaze nostalgia.
That sounds great doesn’t it? So yes, ‘Deny’ is very fucking great.
29.
Sloucho, Curtisy
Gimme it
‘Gimme It’ is a hype collaboration between the enigmatic Irish producer Sloucho and Curtisy, with the Jobstown rapper jumping on a production from Sloucho with treated vocals and a big bass-dropping hyper rhythm.
28.
Sprints
Better
All That Is Over, the second album from Sprints reveals a softer side amongst the band’s trademark angsty garage rock, with the band’s urgency ever present, yet more reflective and immediate, as exemplified on the swirling heartsore ‘Better’.
27.
Laura Duff
Ramble
Limerick songwriter and musician Laura Duff’s debut album Sea Legs features introspective songwriting drawing from experiences of grief and time spent by the sea.
‘Rumble’ recounts the devastating everyday thoughts and feelings of losing a parent, and the questions that go unanswered.
“I was setting out to write Sea Legs in my Dad’s memory,” says Duff. “It was very intentional in that way. All of the lyrical context is based around that, and his life, as well as trying to maintain some level of communication. ‘Sea Legs’ is inspired by my experience of navigating everything that comes with losing a parent; dealing with grief as time passes, family relationships and the physicality of death.”
26.
lullahush
Maggie na bhFlaitheas
The producer Daniel McIntyre brings Irish trad and electronic music together on his album Ithaca.
The album “explores how a holistic marriage of traditional Irish music and contemporary electronica can express a unique perspective on modern Irish identity.”
‘Maggie na bhFlaitheas’ (Maggie of the Heavens) is the album’s lead track, and the record continues that theme while interrogating ideas of “pride, home and belonging.” The song takes the reel ‘Over The Moore To Maggie’ and bends into into a fast-paced electronic number.
25.
Mhaol
1 800-Call-Me-Back
I love a diegetic dial tone in a song (so much so that I have a Telephone playlist of songs I add to occasionally) and ‘1800-Call-Me-Back’ from the Irish post-punk band’s second album Something Soft On Merge Records is a banger of the form.
Something Soft is filled with spiky noise-rock, with songs informed by intersectional feminism, animal welfare, consumerism and a societal lack of empathy.
24.
Really Good Time
Shit One
Now a trio, Really Good Time start a new chapter with ‘Shit One’ a powerful lean and mean razor-sharp punk-rock song that might be their tightest and most memorable yet.
“Shit One is about a culture that revels in the spectacle of doom; it’s about stoking anxiety, selling nostalgia, and all the nihilism that brings. Things will just get better. Things should just get better. Why hashat makes them tick, through a rounded collection of their best songs yet.
23.
Just Mustard
Endless Deathless
WE WERE JUST HERE – third album from Dundalk alternative rockers Just Mustard added a wider field of vision to the trademark metallic and monochrome sonics, with this track ‘Endless Deathless’ bringing shoegaze to an industrial chasmic level with that central riff.
22.
Skinner
New Wave Vaudeville
Like his album of the same name, Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Aaron Corcoran’s ‘New Wave Vaudeville’ is a song inspired by the freeform art club in New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and specifically James Chance and the Contortions, Liquid Liquid, A Certain Ratio and more.
21.
C2; beddyminaj
2 secs (decembrr42)
Prepare to have the Luas bell ruined for you forever when you hear the C2 production tag. ‘2 Secs’ is a fine example of the Irish underground rap scene forming around nights like Catacombs – a two-minute rap earworm with another of the scene’s beacons beddyminaj.
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.
Merry Christmas Nialler9
Some great tracks I hadn’t heard here, thanks.
The link for Hold me in a new way, is wrong