FEATURE:
Emerald & Gold
IN THIS PHOTO: SOAK
Ten Remarkable Irish Albums from 2022
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I have looked at great Welsh albums…
IN THIS PHOTO: Hannah Peel/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Heartfield
in a previous feature, and I have looked to Scotland this year. This year, to me, has seen some truly phenomenal Irish artists release some terrific music. I am including those from EIRE and Northern Ireland. Nations that have never been short of talent and huge originality, some of the absolute best of 2022 have come from native Irish acts or artists based here. It is hard to whittle down, but I have selected ten that have caught my eye. They include Irish groups, solo artists and duos (in the case of Bernard Butler & Jessie Buckley, Buckley is from Killarney). Ending a brilliant year for music, below are ten stunning works from the beautiful nations. If you missed any of these albums from earlier in the year, then make sure that you…
IN THIS PHOTO: Pillow Queens/PHOTO CREDIT: Rich Gilligan
GIVE them a listen today.
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Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler - For All Our Days That Tear the Heart
Release Date: 17th June
Label: EMI
Producer: Bernard Butler
Standout Tracks: The Eagle & the Dove/Seven Red Rose Tattoos/I Cried Your Tears
Key Cut: For All Our Days That Tear the Heart
Review:
“Is pain the most valuable of all feelings? This is a question that underpins Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler’s collaboration. Both artists have come to this record with singular histories — Buckley as an Oscar-nominated actor, and Butler, formerly of Suede, then a solo star — yet there is a cogent sensibility.
Part of this collaboration is down to Butler’s manager, who introduced the pair, feeling that there might be a sympathy. It is perhaps to be found in the Irish connection, but also a shared love of artists from Nina Simone to Pentangle to Talk Talk. They have previously spoken of wanting people to discover the record “as if they have tripped across a box of photographs in the back of their closet”, and there is certainly something mysterious and fundamental at work.
The Eagle and the Dove opens with fierce intention, a work that seems to dance on a kind of musical tension, with Buckley’s impressive vocal sweeping and soaring, interrogating darkly lit corners, and Butler’s playing at once complex and understated. The album folds in so many elements — elevated folk, classical, blues and rock — and there are lovely moments everywhere. From the lonely-sounding trumpet and piano melody in For All Our Days That Tear the Heart that frames Buckley’s assertion that “we want to be things we’re not”, it is all orchestral intimacy. The sea-shanty folk of 20 Years A-Growing (inspired by Maurice O’Sullivan’s 1933 memoir) mirrors the elegant sadness of Shallow the Water, and The beautiful Seven Red Rose Tattoos is built upon a sense of contradiction, where “sunbathing in the rain” is posited as a natural state of affairs.
Contradiction is everywhere, going back to that central question about the value of pain. How do we know if it has been worth it? Babylon Days tries to answer, as Buckley’s supple voice flies optimistically around Butler’s evocative guitar, and the softness of the reedy fiddle on Footnotes on the Map complements its strident male choir. A bluesy sway adorns We’ve Run the Distance and I Cried Your Tears, and Beautiful Regret shows the range of Buckley’s voice, where she is reminiscent of Karen Carpenter, or on We Haven’t Spoken About the Weather, where perhaps Feist fronts Kings of Convenience. But the doleful vocal intelligence is all her own.
Catch the Dust is an affectingly wheezing prayer to “catch the dust of a memory from a photograph”, that dust evocative of a time once-lived, that life is a precious, fleeting gift, and even amid pain, still remains compelling” – The Irish Times
CMAT - If My Wife New I'd Be Dead
Release Date: 22nd April
Label: AWAL
Producer: Oli Deakin
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/cmat/if-my-wife-new-id-be-dead
Standout Tracks: I Don’t Really Care for You/Lonely/Communion
Key Cut: Nashville
Review:
“Considering her sweepingly-coiffed, tassels ’n’ rhinestones aesthetic, perhaps the most surprising thing about country pop jokester CMAT’s debut is that a fair whack of the grammatically-perplexing ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’ isn’t nearly as country as you might imagine. Though it opens with a paean to escaping to Nashville and closes with a yeehaw-worthy one-two of self-explanatory previous single ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!’ and the twanging, acoustic string plucks of ‘I’d Want U’, there’s plenty nestled in between that pulls from shimmering pop (‘No More Virgos’), American indie (‘Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)’) and plenty more besides. It’s a smart move that means ‘If My Wife New…’ feels like a more well-rounded, modern proposition than one solely indebted to the oldest style going could suggest. While CMAT’s love of soaring, dusty melodies and heart-on-sleeve emoting is evident, she’s also a keenly specific storyteller, musings over adulterous film directors on ‘Peter Bogdanovich’ and throwing in references to Bacardi Breezers and Marian Keyes on ‘I Don’t Really Care For You’. It all works together, amping up the winking, cheeky side of country while also showing CMAT to be an artist enthralled by the genre but not beholden to it” – DIY
Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
Release Date: 22nd April
Labels: Partisan/Rough Trade
Producer: Dan Carey
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/fontaines-d-c/skinty-fia
Standout Tracks: Big Shot/Jackie Down the Line/Skinty Fia
Key Cut: I Love You
Review:
“Fontaines DC will never not be an Irish band. It’s embedded in their lyricism, their imagery, every note that drips from Grian Chatten’s unmistakeable drawl. And yet as they adjust to being one of the world’s breakout rock acts, they’ve often spoken of having to find new ways to carry their identity with them, to keep each record connected to home even as success takes them further and further away.
In ten songs, ‘Skinty Fia’ tackles a range of increasingly dour topics: consumption, greed, corruption, despondency, isolation, heartbreak. It’s heavy, but never heavy-going; cinematic is an easily lauded term, but these are definitely tales of literary prowess, showcasing their growing ability to shape an atmospheric sound. Very few rock bands are doing hooks as well as they are right now; the drum’n’bass breakdown of opener “In ár gcroíthe go deo” (meaning In Our Hearts Forever) comes as both a surprise and an immediate reminder not to pigeonhole, while the title track borders on a ‘90s basement groove, not outrageously dissimilar to what you might expect from a Kasabian or Stone Roses offering. ‘Jackie Down The Line’ reveals Nirvana as a bigger influence than ever, but there are shades of Oasis too - ‘How Cold Love Is’, ‘Roman Holiday’ ‘I Love You’. The latter’s unspooling, retooling and then even bigger race to the finish has the kind of relentlessness that only the deftest of songwriting talents can truly pull off, capturing fury and confusion without ever compromising on dynamics. Described by the band as their most political song to date, its melody seems determined to burrow its way into the brain, deepening its message of propaganda patriotism.
On meditative shanty ‘The Couple Across the Way’, Grian struggles to unpick himself from the woven tapestry of the world’s ills, contemplating his melancholy role: “All the mirrors face the walls and I wake just to long for bed/ ‘Love what’s got you so down low? / The saddest tongue is in your head!’”. Similar to ‘I Love You’’s confessional, it speaks of the unsettling nostalgia that so many of us feel when we leave our home towns behind, the sadness of distance between future and past. By shedding light on Ireland’s struggles, Fontaines DC serve only to highlight their nation’s enduring character, the reasons why it is so central to their beating heart. For those who missed the rabble-rousing of ‘Dogrel’ but liked the darkness of ‘A Hero’s Death’, this record splits the perfect difference, sealing it along the middle with the superglue of a band who now know exactly where they’re going. Truth be told, they’ve never been more at home” – DIY
Pillow Queens - Leave the Light On
Release Date: 1st April
Label: Royal Mountain Records
Producer: Thomas McLaughlin
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/pillow-queens/leave-the-light-on
Standout Tracks: Be By Your Side/Hearts & Minds/Historian
Key Cut: No Good Woman
Review:
“The Irish quartet have always been pretty exceptional at making main character music; think fireside evenings with friends and roof-down road trips in summer. It’s why their feature on the coming-of-age Dating Amber soundtrack made so much sense, and it’s a spirit that’s kept alive throughout their most recent project. On Leave The Light On, their sound is cohesive without being one note; they take their time without labouring the point.
The record opens with the thumping heartbeat on “Be By Your Side”, building up to its chorus before falling back on dreamy harmonies. As frontwoman Pam explains, the track explores “the feeling of being about to burst and how cathartic it could be to allow yourself to let your emotions out and feel the world around you.” A similar level of catharsis is reached on “No Good Woman” - “pretty much a song about Sisyphus” - as the band rail against unattainable standards and the hopelessness that can come with that.
Across their discography, Pillow Queens have effectively nailed the art of finding those small moments of introspection or insecurity and engulfing them in sound: on “Hearts & Minds” the imposter syndrome they’ve discovered in a male dominated industry is mapped onto the earworming chorus; with “Historian”, it’s the everyday moments of falling in love that match up to a restless instrumental. “Sonically we wanted it to sound like it was tender and delicate but with moments of chaos,” guitarist Cathy explains, “echoing the unexpected nature of it.”
Standout moments from this record are found on the opening riff of “Well Kept Wife” and in the crescendo of “My Body Moves”, but across the record it’s clear that Pillow Queens have truly hit their stride as a band. Leave The Light On strikes the balance between the excitement of an early career and the deliberate precision of seasoned musicians” – The Line of Best Fit
Wallis Bird - Hands
Release Date: 27th May
Label: Mount Silver Records
Producers: Marcus Wüst, Philipp Milner and Wallis Bird
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/wallis-bird/hands
Standout Tracks: What’s Wrong with Changing?/Aquarius/Pretty Lies
Key Cut: DreamWriting
Review:
“Walis Bird’s music has been a staple in the Irish music scene since her first release Spoons in 2007. Her spirited releases have followed those who have been growing in an environment where genres have been mixing and matching such as Saint Sister and Ailbhe Reddy. Now with Hands, Bird faces into her personal history with empathy and the energy that pushes her into legendary status.
Bird captures how exciting trusting yourself can be and Hands is all about taking that leap. Her openhearted lyrics and earthy vocals instil a sense of pride, not only of yourself and the tribulations you’ve been through, but as an Irish person, of how far Ireland has come. On ‘What’s Wrong With Changing?’, tribal drums accompany an empowered Bird who looks back on the progressive actions of her home country.
‘Aquarius’ and ‘Dreamwriting’ float along on childhood memories and fantastical imaginings. The warped echoing guitar and shimmering synths surround the more gentle moments in an ’80s haze.These moments bookend the uplifting chaos as if Róisín Murphy and Kate Bush were playing back to back.
Ultimately, Hands blends fun with reflection; bombastic melodies with passionate confessions. The closing tracks ‘The Dive’ and ‘Pretty Lies’ lead into a wondrous ending that has birdsong and an electric guitar solo working hand in hand. Pushing you to groove one minute and breathe the next, Wallis Bird has crafted a multifaceted record; one that honours her roots” – Loud and Quiet
Aoife Doyle - Infinitely Clear
Release Date: 22nd April
Label: Rannagh Records
Producer: Michael Buckley
Buy: https://aoifedoyle.bandcamp.com/album/infinitely-clear
Standout Tracks: Love Conquers All/Infinitely Clear/Awakening
Key Cut: They Say
Review:
“Aoife Doyle is an artist on a steep upward curve. Her first two albums, This Time the Dream's On Me (2013) and Clouds (2017) were well-received and charted the Wicklow-born vocalist's progress from a fine interpreter of other people's songs to a composer and lyricist who was beginning to find her own voice.
Infinitely Clear, however, is on a whole other level, a gorgeous confection of jazz, folk, soul and country that will surely bring her the attention she deserves and bears comparison – in sound, in finesse, and in its potential to make a star of its creator – with Norah Jones’s debut album. Songs like They Say, Love Conquers All and Strength to be Strong, already released as singles and getting plenty of mainstream domestic airplay, glow with inner warmth and conviction, with more than enough to satisfy the heart and the hips.
Talented musicians
As before, Doyle has gathered around her a group of talented musicians – including her classy regular trio of pianist Johnny Taylor, bassist Andrew Csibi and drummer Dominic Mullan – and brought them into the House of Horns studio in Dublin where producer and master saxophonist Michael Buckley has worked his magic. With gorgeous horn arrangements from Buckley and trumpeter Ronan Dooney, delicate backing vocals from Margot Daly, and further layers of lushness from organist Justin Carroll and guitarist Jack Maher, Infinitely Clear is a heart-warming gem, a classic in the making from an artist who has found her groove and, one senses, is about to be huge” – The Irish Times
Sorcha Richardson - Smiling Like an Idiot
Release Date: 23rd September
Label: Faction Record LTD.
Producer: Alex Casnoff
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/sorcha-richardson/smiling-like-an-idiot
Standout Tracks: Shark Eyes/Purgatory/Jackpot
Key Cut: Spotlight Television
Review:
“Smiling Like An Idiot is, according to Richardson, “about falling in love with a person and a place, which in this case is Dublin, and how those two are interlinked.” Across 11 tracks, we follow her through the stages of relationship that we experience collectively but often do not understand. Sorcha has already become known for writing her biography through her albums, while making it relatable, sincere, always with a little humor sprinkled on top; on the album we hear her process her euphoria, her anxiety, the person she was, her doubts and more.
Melancholic electric guitars with a folksy, almost country twang accented by slide guitars open the album in “Archie”, a song about friendship rather than love. Fear not, she sings away without mentioning those country crutch words “truck”, “beer”, or “girl,” using her lilting vocals to maintain a steady plod until her chorus enters with a cymbal crash, vocal layers, and warmth. The track becomes one of movement in her triumphant lament: “waiting on the weekend / there’s nothing for me here / so don’t you be a stranger / don’t you disappear.”
A moody synth arpeggio opens “Shark Eyes” with an echo of Tangerine Dream. Sorcha’s sweet, innocent vocal belies her intentions; “I ain’t waiting on the outside / looking for your invite… I’ll just say it outright, I knew it the first night.” She floats around the ups and downs of her love over bright droning synth pads and energetic drums. Collaboration with producer Alex Casnoff (Sparks, Dawes, Harriet) did not prove to be an issue across the distance: she in Dublin, he in LA, and his mark is apparent in tracks like this where he makes the bed and she builds on top.
“Spotlight Television” opens with a chorused electric guitar that reminds of Jane’s Addiction’s “Classic Girl”. Sorcha enters with a honeyed melody and ponders another love found and possibly lost; “we hold our nerve / get the love that we deserve / won’t let the signal die keep calling in the blackout / I won’t let the line go dead.” Full of dreamy harmonies, it’s a windows-open kind of tune.
Ambient synth pads give way to arpeggiated electric guitars and shuffling drums, while Sorcha reflects on a love gone awry in “Stalemate”. Grungy guitars counterpose the acoustic strums and solo violin that raise the final choruses, an uplifting feel that almost contradicts her worries; “don’t you think you got me wrong / yeah, you might have got me wrong.” Sorcha has said she “was trying not to think too much about genre, so the references could be anything from Carole King to LCD Soundsystem” and this is apparent in “Stalemate” and the album as a whole, as so many of the tracks effortlessly cross genre.
“Purgatory” begins with the sounds of a room and sweet synth but dissolves into distorted stabs and fuzzed out guitars. Sorcha trudges through seven terraces of her love story: the tone gets a bit darker for a spell but we see again her melodic craft and lyricism. I can’t tell if her purgatory is closer to heaven or hell, but with the way she lays it out, I would take either with her.
During her time living in her grandparents’ home, she wrote a string of tracks right after the next: “Jackpot”, “Holiday”, “Good Intentions”, and “Starlight Lounge”. The latter was released as a standalone single, while the rest appear here on Smiling Like An Idiot. As she explains: “the stakes in these songs feel high, these moments are so charged and magnetized, and I wanted the music to match that adrenaline.”
“Jackpot” is an acoustic ballad full of coffee-shop-vibing. “Holiday” lifts the levels just a bit but makes it clear the tracks were siblings in the writing process. It’s a natural sounding track, and it’s not hard to imagine lying in a room with the songwriter “playing songs on the speakers.” Any song opening with happy claps gives you the warm and fuzzies of her anthemic evolution.
While the album’s themes could be taken as melodramatic, Sorcha’s coy lyricism lifts the album to a level of sophistication on par with her contemporaries like Phoebe Bridgers. Among the main themes on the album is the insecurity one feels in a new relationship, and Sorcha has said: “There’s a need to take a leap of faith and ask someone to take a bet on you, or to take a bet on you when you’re not sure you would bet on yourself.” This could also be an allegory for the experience of releasing an album, and Smiling Like An Idiot is absolutely one to bet on” – Beats Per Minute
SOAK - If I never know you like this again
Release Date: 20th May
Label: Rough Trade
Producer: Tommy McLaughlin
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/soak/if-i-never-know-you-like-this-again
Standout Tracks: purgatory/get well soon/swear jar
Key Cut: last July
Review:
“SOAK’s first two albums had already established their brand of queer indie-rock befitting a coming-of-age soundtrack, so it wasn’t surprising to hear them featured on episode six of Heartstopper last month. Now, their third record is “the most accurate picture” of themselves to date, written over the long months of the pandemic. “I felt no pressure at all,” they explain. “It was almost like I was ranting as I was writing.” Complete with dreamy guitar bends, gorgeous harmonies, and a candid lyricism that Phoebe Bridgers would be proud of, If I Never Know You Like This Again has undoubtedly delivered a hat-trick for the Derry-born artist.
From examining uncertainties on “purgatory”, the record moves to one of its highlights, “last july”, a near anthemic pop track set against a wall of guitar that echoes the sound of fellow Irish rockers Pillow Queens. From there. SOAK’s talent of tongue-in-cheek writing truly comes into its own: “what if you fall in love overnight / with some posh boy on a gap year?” they fret on “bleach”, an intimate confession of their insecurities as a lover. The heartbreaking “get well soon” strikes a similar balance between the serious and the cynical: agonising over words unsaid to late friends, and of ongoing mental health struggles, they offer the weak suggestion that “maybe we should hang a ‘live laugh love’ sign”.
Another of the record’s standouts is “baby, you’re full of shit”. “I probably won’t listen to your podcast,” SOAK concedes with brilliantly brutal indifference, refusing to make any more excuses for a walking red flag. That they were ranting as they were writing can be heard most obviously at the tail-end of the album, as “red-eye” relives the feelings of displacement on a trip to America with restless frustration. That energy carries on into “neptune” - an epic of a crescendo that almost reaches seven minutes in length. It would, perhaps, have made sense to leave this as the record’s conclusion, but the epilogue track, “swear jar”, is far from an afterthought. “Where have I been all my life? / Watching myself from the sidelines,” SOAK muses over an acoustic guitar and haunting harmonies. It’s as much a moment of catharsis as “neptune”: where the first came wrapped in energy and volume, the album’s true finale is found in quiet self-reflection” – The Line of Best Fit
Hannah Peel - The Midwich Cuckoos (Original Soundtrack)
Release Date: 3rd June
Label: Invada Records
Producer: Hannah Peel
Buy: https://hannahpeelmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-midwich-cuckoos-original-score
Standout Tracks: Cuckoo/Hive Screams/A Pattern
Key Cut: Pregnant
Review:
“Deeply unnerving but weirdly consoling at the same time – rather like the children who have mysteriously arrived in the town!
Peel’s ability to portray pastoral scenes through her electronics is a massive bonus, for some of the scene setting is exquisite, matching the rich green shades of the production. Yet there is often a dark undercurrent to the writing and a sense of profound unease, especially when describing the hive mind the children have in place. This is done with a single pitch of changing colour and tonal quality, an eerie echo rebounding as though off the walls of a quarry. Lasting comfort is hard to find, though there is brief solace in the mother-child relationships that are formed.
Peel writes descriptively, her melodies portraying the strength of emotion on show from the mothers towards their children, but the deep drones and atmospherics tell a very different story, revealing the layers at work in the youngsters’ minds.
The title music itself is otherworldly, suggesting the intervention of beings from well beyond this planet, and quoting the birdsong of the cuckoo which has at its heart the promise of spring. The Cuckoo music takes the form of the bird as it grows, with the telling lyric “In June, I change my tune”. The Midwich Cuckoos Theme is dark indeed, blotting out the light in a haunting 20 second salvo” – arcana
Just Mustard – Heart Under
Release Date: 27th May
Label: Partisan Records
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/just-mustard/heart-under
Producers: Just Mustard
Standout Tracks: Still/Blue Chalk/In Shade
Key Cut: Mirrors
Review:
“Since the release of their debut album ‘Wednesday’ in 2018, Dundalk five-piece Just Mustard have been gradually shifting their sound towards something more uncategorisable. Through the singles ‘Frank’, ‘October’ and ‘Seven’ as well as tours with Fontaines D.C. and gigs alongside The Cure, the band’s sound has slowly shifted towards heavier, noisier tones and left behind the shoegaze tag that has followed them around since the release of their debut. On ‘Heart Under’, their second album and first for Partisan, they present themselves as a truly unique gem.
Across the whole of the new album, Just Mustard’s instruments are used inventively, finding new corners of untouched landscape. The scything sound that begins ‘Still’ sounds like industrial machinery firing up, rather than the noise of a guitar, and the dual attack of guitarists David Noonan and Mete Kalyoncuoglu is the album’s main focus throughout. The pair are constantly stretching their instruments to new levels, sounding like everything from wailing sirens (‘23’) to techno synths (‘Seed’), while also often providing watery, ambient beauty (‘Mirrors’). It contrasts beautifully with the warm melodies of Rob Clarke’s basslines and Katie Ball’s deeply atmospheric vocals.
Speaking to NME recently, guitarist David Noonan said that the band thrive when “finding ways of arranging songs with traditional rock band instrumentation, but trying to find ways of doing it that reflect other types of music that we are interested in, not just guitar-based music.” Many of the choices made on ‘Heart Under’ feel deliberately picked in order to avoid easy categorisation, but the conviction with which the band go through with them makes them feel purposeful, rather than purely an exercise in doing something different for the sake of it.
After being self-produced by the band at Donegal’s Attica Studios and then finished at home once the pandemic hit, they enlisted David Wrench, one half freak-pop duo Audiobooks, whose production credits include The xx and Frank Ocean, to mix the record. As such, ‘Heart Under’ skews away from the traditional structures of rock music – there are no ‘choruses’ as such here – and seems to rise and fall on its own timeline, be it at the cacophonous end of single ‘I Am You’ or right out of the gate on the harsh, metallic ‘Seed’; this is music that keeps you guessing.
The band have said they want ‘Heart Under’ to feel like the experience of driving through a tunnel with the windows down. Through deliciously inventive musicianship they’ve created something even more thrilling” – NME