The 10 best Irish albums of 2025 so far

Irish Times

2 days ago

Amble: Reverie (Warner Records/Amble Music) ★★★☆☆
Exactly how
Amble
have struck such a popular nerve – after less than a year, the trio are already selling out arena-size venues – with what are essentially simple folk tunes isn't a mystery: people love sincerely delivered melancholy. Lonely Island, Mariner Boy, The Boy Who Flew Away, Of Land and Sea, Little White Chapel, and Ode to John are tailor-made for heartstring-plucking singalongs. Robbie Cunningham, Oisín McCaffrey and Ross McNerney have clearly pooled their songwriting skills in a way that leans towards the balladeering side of traditional music. Fans of more disorderly takes on Irish folk – The Mary Wallopers, for example – might raise an eyebrow, but there's no denying Amble's low-key charm offensive.
Bren Berry: In Hope Our Stars Align (Mercenary Records) ★★★★☆
Now in his early 60s,
Bren Berry
was a member of the 1990s Irish contenders Revelino, a supercharged indie-rock band that could make guitars ring and choruses chime just by thinking about them. Come the close of that decade, Berry was approached to work on a new Dublin venue by the name of Vicar Street. Waving goodbye to a career as a musician seemed inevitable, but a few years ago any resignation must have turned to rediscovery. The outcome is a 12-track solo album that takes classic guitar-centric compositions and invests them not only with life experience but also with a sleek blend of Jesus & Mary Chain, REM, Beach House and The Byrds. If there are better songs of the genre than Bullet Proof, Beautiful Losers, Turn on Your Radio and Winter Song, then we haven't heard them yet.
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Curtisy: Beauty in the Beast (Brook Records) ★★★★☆
Building on the promise of What Was the Question, his debut album, from 2024, Curtisy – aka Gavin Curtis – returns with a collaborative mixtape that veers into more sombre narrative territory. Once again working with the producer Hikii (aka Mark Hickey), the Tallaght rapper has created songs whose cinematic qualities are underscored by smart sampling. Curtisy also collaborates with the singer-songwriter Shiv (on Left, Right!) and his fellow Dublin wordsmith Flynn (Drive Slow), but the tone from start to finish is emphatically his.
Rob de Boer: Man to You (Bridge the Gap) ★★★★★
If any album released in the past six months reflects strolling along rural footpaths with the fragrance of flowers wafting around you and the promise of a 99 with a flake at the next local shop, then it's Man to You. The musician and producer
Rob de Boer
– think of him as the sonic twin of blue skies and light breezes – delivers a masterclass in fusion. He brings soul, jazz and contemporary influences – plus old-school rhythms – to bear on a line-up of songs that conjure the hazy strains of John Martyn, Oscar Jerome, Nina Simone and Bill Withers. And pay attention to de Boer's lyrics, which reflect on his sexuality amid religious conservatism and society's ideas of adulthood.
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Matthew Devereux: Keep Sketch (House Devil Records) ★★★☆☆
Matthew Devereux
of The Pale follows up House Devil, his solo album from 2024, with a far leaner piece of work. Mostly autobiographical, it allows memories to fly across the decades. We hear of schoolboy fistfights (Government Milk: 'most times it was all just mouth, all over in a second, no messing about'), forays into illegal substances (Drug Stories: 'Lying on my back, high on aerosol, watching the clouds form') and other tales of growing up on Dublin's northside. What stands out is Devereux's uncluttered music, which allows the songs to shine. There's smart Krautrock here (Seven Grams), touches of Being Boiled-era Human League there (the title track) and understated hints of Depeche Mode elsewhere (Government Milk again). The result is a toned-down album from a songwriter who merits more attention.
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Danny Groenland: Burning Rome (Self-Released) ★★★★☆
Danny Groenland
released his debut album, Love Joints, in 2014, so he's an artist who's in it for the long haul. Repeated listens to Burning Rome unearth layer upon layer of fine-tuned soul/R&B/jazz that revels in the joys of being influenced by the likes of politically motivated artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, and by earworm acts such as Steely Dan. Groenland's lyrics tackle topics such as institutional racism, social division and all manner of other inequalities. The cherry on top is the quality of the satin-smooth songs.
Maria Kelly: Waiting Room (Veta Records) ★★★★☆
Maria Kelly
's follow-up to The Sum of the In-Between, her 2021 album, is 'an exploration of the roadblocks, both internally and externally, that keep us feeling powerless and take away our agency'. These barriers include the housing crisis, societal opportunities, dwindling relationships and, perhaps most crucially, Kelly's experiences of chronic pain and the Irish health system's engagement with it (hence the name of the album). Despite the subject matter, songs such as the title track ('I wait to hear my name, I wait to feel okay ... Tell me what's wrong') His Parents' House ('I'd rather be anywhere else, feel like myself, take my time, feel like my life is mine') and Slump ('I'm in a slump and I can't wake up, I've been feeling this way all week') present Kelly's relatable worldview via melodic hooks and nimble indie-pop choruses.
Van Morrison: Remembering Now (Virgin Records/Exile Productions) ★★★★☆
Even though he has released six other albums in the past five years, there hasn't been a dependably good
Van Morrison
LP since the early 1990s. Remembering Now changes that. We can, perhaps, find the source in Kenneth Branagh's 2021 film Belfast, for which Morrison wrote the score and a new song, Down to Joy – the first of many tracks on the album that hark back to the songwriter's autumnal glory days. It isn't Astral Weeks, but there are plenty of astral moments in songs as languorous as Memories and Visions; When the Rains Came; Love, Lover and Beloved; the title track; and Haven't Lost My Sense of Wonder (a rare instance of Morrison referencing one of his songs, in this case the title track of A Sense of Wonder, his 1984 album). At the top of the pile is the gliding nine-minute closing track, Stretching Out. Most of the songs feature the sublime string arrangements of Fiachra Trench.
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Somebody's Child: When Youth Fades Away (Frenchkiss Records) ★★★★☆
Under the name
Somebody's Child
, Cian Godfrey has been inching closer to commercial success for some time, yet despite close to 30 million streams on Spotify, there doesn't seem to be as much of a buzz about his music as there is for other acts. That certainly deserves to change with Somebody's Child's ambitious second album, the tracks on which range from festival-fit big moments (The Kid, My Mind Is on Fire, and Wall Street) to slighter but no less powerful intimacies (Irish Goodbye, Time of My Life, The Waterside, and Life Will Go On). Despite sounding not unlike The Killers and The National – he recorded the album with the latter's frequent producer Peter Katis – Godfrey's music is distinctive enough to remain all his own.
The Would Be's: Hindzeitgiest (Roundy Records) ★★★★☆
Second chances don't come any sweeter than this. Most of
The Would Be's
were teenagers when their debut single, I'm Hardly Ever Wrong, attracted the interest of John Peel, Morrissey and several big record companies, in the early 1990s. Fast-forward a few decades and the older, wiser Co Cavan band are still releasing textbook indie pop. That's How It Gets You is an open-topped summer tune par excellence, Stay Tuned is tailor-made for the next James Bond movie, Stupid Little Heart is redolent of The Smiths' best, and Home Is Not a House is a contender for the prettiest ballad of the year.
On the horizon: some Irish artists with new albums to watch out for in 2025
July:
Sons of Southern Ulster, Cian Ducrot, Poor Creature, The Swell Season.
August:
CMAT, Kingfishr, Caimin Gilmore.
September:
Junior Brother, Elaine Mai, The Divine Comedy, Altered Hours, Sprints.
October:
RuthAnne, Lowli, Beauty Sleep, J Smith.