Top 10 Irish Albums of 2024
The “Top 10 Vinyl Finds of 2024” is here.
It’s been another incredible year for Irish music. Songs from all ten of these albums were featured on Songs To Learn And Sing on 103.2 Dublin City FM throughout 2024 and Episode 990 featured some of my favourite songs from these albums. Notes on all ten albums are below. In compiling a “Top 10 Irish Albums of 2024” I don’t want to ignore all of the other great Irish music that came my way this year. A good few of the albums in my “Top 10” are there by dint of being released earlier in 2024 and therefore I’ve simply spent more time with them.
Just outside my Top 10 are a load of fantastic albums worth checking out including: Ecce Homo by Gavin Friday; That Golden Time by Villagers; Isn’t It Everything by Paul Callan; Sit Tight by Exmagician; Now in a Minute by Susan O’Neill; Sycamore Helicopters by M Stevens & the Ghasts; Name Your Sorrow by Pillow Queens; A Kind of Dreaming by Driven Snow; Pulling At The Brairs by David Hedderman; Painting Devils by Barry McCormack; Swirling Violets by Conchúr White; Come and See by Gurriers, Silver City by Acton Bell and Street Hardware by Soft on Crime.
Songs To Learn And Sing EP 990
11pm Wednesday, 04 December 2024
Irish Single of 2024
Pebbledash – Carriag Aonair
Irish Albums of 2024
10. Big Boy Foolish (w/ Justin Kelly) – Penumbra (Stall the Ball)
9. John Hegarty – Daydreaming (Daydreaming)
8. Sack – I Fell Through the Crack (Wake Up People!)
7. Melts – Waves of Wonder (Field Theory)
6. Fontaines D.C. – Here’s the Thing (Romance)
5. Sprints – Literary Mind (Letter to Self)
4. Landless – The Wounded Hussar (Lúireach)
3. The High Llamas – Sisters Friends (Hey Panda)
2. David Murphy – Bridget Cruise (Cuimhne Ghlinn - Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar)
1. A Lazarus Soul – The Flower I Flung Into Her Grave (No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens)
Best Irish single of 2024
Pebbledash
‘Killer Lover’/‘Carraig Aonair’
Pebbledash describe themselves as a “6 piece shoegaze alt rock band from Cork.” In August they released the great single ‘Killer Lover’. However, it was the b-side ‘Carraig Aonair’ that I returned to again and again. It’s Pebbledash’s take on sean-nós. It’s experimental, its drones build and then everything drops out so we’re just left with the gentle vocals of Asha Egan McCutcheon lamenting as Gaeilge. It’s fantastic. In January they’ll take a giant leap forward with the release of their Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House EP.
Irish Compilation of 2024
Bring Your Own Hammer presents
My Grief on the Sea
Bring Your Own Hammer is a collaborative project bringing historians and composers together to create new song cycles based on historical sources. My Grief on the Sea, an album on the theme of sea journeys and migration to and from Ireland in the nineteenth century, is the first album by the group of collaborators which includes: the late Cathal Coughlan, Jah Wobble, Eileen Gogan, Neil Farrell, Linda Buckley, Adrian Crowley, Michael J Sheehy and Carol Keogh.
The project is the idea of Dr Richard McMahon, a lecturer in History at MIC, Limerick. I spoke to McMahon about the project for the Irish Examiner (Bring Your Own Hammer: Musicians and historians unite for unique project) and he explained that, “I'm particularly interested in developing the use of historical material in creative ways to engage the public, and also to extend the nature of the discipline of history.”
Highlights from the album include Mike Smalle’s (Cane 141) ‘The Oscillating Sea’, a song that seeks to capture “the swell of the sea”, and Michael J. Sheehy’s ‘The Weight of Water’, the tale of two lovers who swim out to sea to escape the Famine. The songs ends with Sheehy repeating the refrain, “Let the water hold you, and dream yourself far from here” to heartbreaking effect.
After the album’s release we got more new music from the group: ‘The White Birds’ by Adrian Crowley and ‘The Heart of the Wood’ by Eileen Gogan (with Neil Farrell). In August they released Shipwreck on the West an EP of songs about shipwrecks off the West coast of Ireland and according to McMahon, “We also have most of an album on the theme of law and order, with another track from Cathal that he finished. I think there’s about 30 or 40 songs in total in the bag. If the world can handle that much Irish history, there’s lots more to come.”
I for one can most definitely handle more songs about Irish history.
Special Mention 1
David Long & Shane O’Neill
whoiwasandwhatiam
It’s not an “album” in the technical sense of that word. In 2022 David Long and Shane O’Neill, formerly of the great Dublin bands Into Paradise and Blue in Heaven, released ‘whelve’ an 11 minute composition that was commissioned by The Source Arts Centre in Thurles.
whoiwasandwhatiam is another Source commission and this time the duo were encouraged to write a longer piece. It’s one track that’s just over 37 minutes long. It’s a dense piece that totally benefits from repeated listens. My first few listens were while I was out walking the dog and with each subsequent listen I found that I was hearing different motifs depending on my focus.
It’s a long soundscape and at certain points, as chiming guitars, keyboard strains and drum patterns emerge from the layers of noise, more familiar song structures unfold before receding back into the mists of noise. In November Brendan Maher from the Source Arts Centre conducted a webinar with Long and O’Neill. The two old friends humbly reflected on the writing and recording process of whoiwasandwhatiam and and how age has changed their creative and artistic compulsions. The duo contemplated whoiwasandwhatiam as a sound art installation, a soundtrack to an imaginary (or real) film and whether they could envisage playing it live. They also discussed the late Dennis Potter and how his ideas about the past and present - “So that it isn’t a thing out there, the past, which is done with, it’s actually running along beside us” - influenced their writing. It was fascinating to spent an hour online in the company of these two Irish music legends.
Special Mention 2
Fohn
Seanteach
“Producer and violinist Fohn brings connection, displacement and new identities into the moment, in an experimental debut album informed by Ireland’s island life, marine folklore and musical tradition.”
Fohn is Tom Connolly of the experimental Bristol-based four piece Quade. Part of the Irish diaspora, on Seanteach he explores his relationship with Ireland and in particular Connemara, where his father’s family is from. Seanteach is a very different album to Long and O’Neill’s whoiwasandwhatiam, but both deal with the present confronting the past.
Connolly’s songs on Seanteach are inspired by Maighinis Island, off the coast from Carna in Connemara, where his grandmother was born. On the album Connolly takes to the fiddle - which he learnt as a child - and fuses the instrument with ambient electronics, nature and archive recordings to mesmerizing effect. ‘Trá’ and ‘Boreen’ are presumably written about memories that Connolly has of the island or of stories he’s heard about the place. ‘MacDara’ is named after St. MacDara, the hermit who founded a medieval oratory that still stands on MacDara island just west of Maighinis. On ‘Between the Shoreline and the Gorse’, the album’s seven-minute centrepiece, Connolly attempts to reimagine his grandmother’s, “memories of her rural Irish island life from the new life she created for herself in the states”. On ‘Closer’, the album’s last track, a woman, maybe a relative of Connolly’s (his grandmother?), can be heard talking as Gaeilge. Its effect is to pull this contemporary sounding record and situate it back into an historical past. A stunning record.
Best Irish Albums of 2024
10. Big Boy Foolish
Stall the Ball
“We’re two midfielders, neither of us are centre forwards,” explained guitarist and singer Liam Heffernan when he and guitarist Ricky Dineen, his Big Boy Foolish partner, joined me on Episode 40 (Hiding From the Landlord by Nun Attax/Five Go Down to the Sea?/Beethoven) of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited.
The old friends chatted about making music in their 60s and how they work together in Big Boy Foolish. “I’d be more of a defensive midfielder. Ricky’s more of an attacking midfielder,” continued Liam. “Being a singer wasn’t on my agenda at all, but here we are. Somehow, I find myself singing.”
“It’s kind of similar to the old days,” added guitarist Ricky. “It’s riff-based songs. Develop the riffs, then the vocals are added, and the songs develop from there.”
“The old days” that Ricky refers to are the years himself and Liam spent ensconced in Cork’s post-punk music scene. Liam was the guitarist with Mean Features alongside future Stump singer Mick Lynch and Ricky played guitar alongside singer Finbarr Donnelly in Nun Attax, Five Go Down to the Sea? and Beethoven.
Those riff-based songs ended up as Stall the Ball, the duo’s debut album. Two guitars and a drum machine, it’s raw and gnarly. Highlights include ‘Up the Airy’, ‘North Gate Bridge’ and the album’s closer ‘Penumbra’ wherein the lads are ably assisted by Justin Kelly’s (of Sons of Southern Ulster fame) stream of conscious spoken-word tribute to Cork’s post-punk past. Early copies of Stall the Ball also came with a free 7” of the band’s take on Seán O’Callaghan’s ballad about Connie Doyle’s famed harrier, ‘The Armoured Car’.
9. John Hegarty
Daydreaming
Daydreaming is John Hegarty’s - the Tralee-born, Kilkenny-based, singer-songwriter - first new material in almost ten years, but it was business as usual.
That business, for those unfamiliar with Hegarty’s previous albums, is exquisite songs, delivered in gorgeous arrangements, augmented by lush strings, piano, and delicate percussion. Everyday imagery (a trip to the seaside, sitting in a field in summertime) shaped into literary lyrics sung in Hegarty’s unaffected accent.
I spoke to John about Daydreaming on Episode 48 (Twilight by John Hegarty) of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited. “A lot of people will write 20 or 30 songs in a year and pick five of them that they like,” said John.
“Whereas I will stick at five or six until they come around, it’s a lot of work to make them work but I’m really happy with the album. For me, I’ve got two or three really good albums now that I’m really proud of.”
The title track is inspired by an interview that Patti Smith gave in which she mentioned the importance of “drift” time to the creative process. “She just said that people are on their phones so much that they don’t look out the window or look around them anymore, they’re constantly busy,” recalled John. “The idea of just letting your mind drift and letting your imagination go and I took that as a big thing for ‘Daydreaming’.”
“Daydreaming, daydreaming
just you and me lost in reverie,
daydreaming”
Just lovely!
8. Sack
Wake Up People!
Earlier this year, on Episode 39 (Butterfly Effect by Sack) of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited, Sack’s Martin McCann and John Brereton told me how their first band - Lord John White - had suffered a really serious traffic accident returning from a gig in Cork late one night. Guitarist and song-writer John was very lucky to survive the crash and literally had to learn to walk again, he and bandmates re-emerged as Sack. The story of the crash and its aftermath are recounted in ‘I Fell Through a Crack’, the brilliant opening song on Wake Up People!
‘I fell out of luck when I smashed through the windscreen, woke up on a bed full of morphine and misery,” sings Martin, telling John’s tale of rehabilitation. It’s a juggernaut of a tune.
When Sack released ‘What A Way To Live’ in 2022, after a hiatus of 20 years, we knew this was going to be a comeback with serious intent. Most bands of their vintage are happy to go out and play the old tunes, revel in a nostalgic glow and have a good time. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that but Power of Dreams showed with 2021’s Ausländer that you can also come back on a creative high. Sack have followed suit.
When we spoke the band were in the middle of recording the album. “It’s really sounding great, I think it’s going to be our best record yet by a long way,” reckoned John.
“We recorded ‘What a Way to Live’, it got loads of radio play. We said let’s keep it going, I was writing loads of songs and other members were writing too and we actually have four members in the band who can sing now. Obviously no one touches McCann, but we’ve three backing vocalists now, we’re turning into The Beach Boys.”
Martin laughed in agreement. “There’s a few more harmonies than normal, but we’re still interested and that’s what makes us write the songs,” he smiled. We should be thankful they’re still at it because Wake Up People! is the strongest set of songs of their career.
7. Melts
Field Theory
In late November Melts announced that their lead singer, Eoin Kenny, was leaving the band.
“Due to personal commitments Eoin has decided to step down as singer for MELTS. We’ve had some great times over the past seven years and we wish him all the best in the future,” read the band’s statement.
Those great times included writing, recording and releasing 2022’s debut album Maelstrom and following it up with this year’s Field Theory. Maelstrom was good but Field Theory was great. ‘Waves of Wonder’ was the album’s standout moment, three and a half minutes of pulsing psych-Kraut brilliance. ‘WLDNG’ and ‘The Never’ were two other mammoth tunes on this Daniel Fox (Gilla Band) produced abum.
Whatever comes next we wish them all the best.
6. Fontaines D.C.
Romance
Four albums in. Fontaines D.C. moved to XL Recordings, switched from longtime producer Dan Carey to Depeche Mode and Arctic Monkeys’ producer, and former Simian Mobile Disco member, James Ford. The band also seemed to draw a line under their past by changing their image.
I loved Romance. ‘Starburster’, ‘Favourite’, ‘In the Modern World’ and ‘Here’s the Thing’ were four of the tunes of the year.
Romance was poppier, it was more accessible without completely ironing out the edgier elements of the band’s sound. Four brilliant albums in five years. Bigger shows, and their own outdoor gigs scheduled for Summer 2025. They also weren’t afraid to use their platform to talk about Palestine. Long may the upward trajectory continue. For me the only misstep was the new image though, it looked a little too choreographed by stylists.
5. Sprints
Letter to Self
On the inner sleeve Sprints declared Letter to Self: “An album for anyone who needs it. An exploration of pain, passion and perseverance. Make noise and look after each other.”
Melts weren’t the only band to lose a member this year. Following the release of Letter to Self, founding guitarist Colm O’Reilly departed from garage punk band in May 2024. Being in a band is tough. Never doubt that.
Letter to Self came out in January. ‘Adore Adore Adore’ and ‘Literary Mind’, two of the album’s singles came out even earlier. I’ve been listening to this album for nearly 12 months. I haven’t tired of it yet. It’s ferocious, noisy, angry and extremely thrilling. With each listen I come away with a new favourite tune. This week’s it’s ‘Up and Comer’; a few week’s ago it was ‘Cathedral’. Letter to Self is the second Daniel Fox produced album on this list, confirmation (as if it were needed) of the influence Gilla Band have had on the Irish music scene in the last decade. Sprints released the great ‘Feast’, a new non-album single, in late September. All bodes well for 2025.
4. Landless
Lúireach
Glitterbeat Records, the label formed by Peter Weber (Glitterhouse Records) and Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts), have expanded their original mission of bringing vibrant African sounds to a wider audience. What started as a vehicle for Mali’s Tamikrest has expanded to include great albums by Seán Mulrooney’s Berlin emsemble Tau & the Drones of Praise, Saagara - Polish avant-garde jazz artist Waclaw Zimpel collaboration with musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India, and Brìghde Chaimbeul’s drones on the Scottish smallpipes. Glitterbeat also brought us Lúireach by Landless.
Landless are Lily Power, Meabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinead Lynch. Most of the songs on Lúireach are unaccompanied traditional songs in four-part harmony. The songs are full of “melancholy, love, death and mystery” and are unbelievably powerful. Standouts include: ‘The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry’ (a version of the traditional Orkney folk song), ‘The Wounded Hussar (a version of Thomas Campbell’s 1799 poem) and ‘Ej Husári’ (a Slovak song that Landless learned from teacher and singer Eva Brunovská).
3. The High Llamas
Hey Panda
Sean O’Hagan was optimistic about how Hey Panda would be received when I spoke to him in April for the Irish Examiner (Sean O’Hagan, the High Llamas, and looking to the future). “It’s just a very different sound for me. I’m forcing myself into a departure and I’m at the age and the stage where you do everything on your own terms and success is somebody getting in touch and saying, ‘I love the new single, it’s wonderful’. That’s success. It isn’t anything to do with statistics or numbers.”
The departure that Sean refers to began in 2021 when he worked with Benjamin Garrett, better known as Fryars, and the experience proved enlightening. “I met Ben Garrett, Fryars, and he asked me to make his record God Melodies. I made the record, did the arrangements and played. I learned so much from working with him,” recalls O’Hagan. “This guy works with Mark Ronson, Lily Allen, Skepta, Dave, all sorts of people. So his contemporary knowledge, abilities and participation are well documented.
“He taught me so much and I just relearned the whole programming thing and I learned an awful lot about R&B rhythm, and I loved it. I loved the music I was listening to: Khalid, Noname, Mount Kimbie, Tyler, Pivot, Daniel Caesar, Frank Ocean, all of those people.”
Hey Panda is a departure that works. Its textures are luxurious and scrumptious. Nylon-stringed guitar, blips and beats, luscious backing vocals and Sean’s vocoder-processed voice combine to create one of the most beautiful sounding records of the year.
And if that wasn’t enough Drag City also reissued the band’s first six albums - Santa Barbara, Gideon Gaye, Hawaii, Cold And Bouncy, Lollo Rosso and Snowbug - on vinyl.
2. David Murphy
Cuimhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar
It’s pedal steel but not as you’d know it! Murphy knew exactly what he was doing with Cuimhne Ghlinn. “My objective was to take the instrument away from its excursions across well-worn roads through the dusty American south and southwest and deeper into a world much closer to home and, for the very first time, present it in a modern Irish framework,” he explained.
I think it’s fair to say he succeeded! Cuimhne Ghlinn’s many highlights include ‘Bridget Cruise’ and ‘Eleanor Plunkett’, interpretations of two compositions of the 17th century blind harper Turlough O’Carolan, and a version of ‘Aisling Ghael’ by Seán Ó Riada. On this gorgeous record Murphy’s pedal steel is accompanied by cello, violin, double bass and uilleann pipes. Two years ago Murphy played pedal steel on Neil O’Connor’s Ordnance Survey project Nomos O’Riada Reimagined. O’Conner returns the favour adding modular synth to Murphy’s title track.
Murphy’s exploration of the roots of Irish trad music carries through to the album’s artwork where designer Craig Carry casts the Irish landscape in sharp geometric pastel tones adorned with a typeface reminiscent of an album that Gael-Linn or Claddagh Records might have released in decades gone by. The effect successfully situates Cuimhne Glinn with a visionary past while simultaneously catapulting it straight into the future on a bed of electronics and synths. Cuimhne Glinn is the album I listened to most in 2024.
1. A Lazarus Soul
No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens
On Episode 46 (A Murder of Crows by Joe Chester) of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited Joe Chester talked about playing guitar and producing A Lazarus Soul.
“I’ve been making records with A Lazarus Soul for 20 years. For 17 or 18 of those years anytime someone put a microphone in front of me I was telling them how Brian Brannigan was the best songwriter in Ireland,” extolled Joe.
“I don’t know if people thought I was posturing but I wasn’t, I was serious. It’s been an amazing experience to see everyone catch up. We opened for The The in Collins Barracks and I stood on the stage beside Brian and we sang ‘The Dealers’. I looked out and I saw his wife and child beaming up looking at Brian so full of pride. I felt that’s why I’m here, I’m here to stand beside Brian and sing his songs with him.”
2024 was definitely the year in which people caught up with ALS. If supporting The The and headlining their own Vicar Street show wasn’t enough Christy Moore also covered two ALS songs on his new album A Terrible Beauty. Moore chose to interpret ‘Lemon Sevens’ and ‘Black & Amber’ from ALS’s last album The D They Put Between the L and R. Speaking of ‘Lemon Sevens’ in an interview with Leagues O’Toole at the press launch for his album Moore said, “It’s just such a powerful song, I think it’s one of the most powerful songs I’ve encountered in my life.” A few weeks earlier on The Late Late Show, Moore told Patrick Kielty that ‘Black & Amber’ was, “written by a great songwriter called Briany Brannigan.” High praise indeed.
No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens (its name inspired by the line ‘My garden is made of stone’ from ‘Psykick Dancehall’ the opening track on The Fall’s second album Dragnet) surpassed The D.
‘The Dealers’, ‘Black Maria’, ‘The Flower I Flung in to Her Grave’ and ‘Glass Swans’ were all highlights.
But it’s ‘Factory Fada’, the tale of two Francis’s, the abuse their suffer in school at the hands of a sadistic teacher and the roads their lives take thereafter, that is the album’s unparalleled high point. Another social realist masterpiece by Brannigan. After almost seven devastating minutes Briany sings:
“Francis Fitzgerald & Francis Maguire, Swung like the runners on the wire, in the breeze
In the class photo of ’83, They were the only two that never said Cheeeeese”
It’s extraordinary. Where to from there? How about a comedown with Lee Scratch Perry riffing some improvised lines.
Album of the year.
Don’t mind the Top 10, the REAL competition was who produced the coolest coloured vinyl in 2024. It came down to Melts vs. A Lazarus Soul. I declare a draw. Photograph by Paul McDermott.
For further reading…
by Paul McDermott
The Goo - Issue 30 (December 2024)