Best New Albums this week: The Mary Wallopers, Beck, Empress Of, Sarah Crean, Boy Harsher + more

The Mary Wallopers take our album of the week with their raucous third record Paddywhackery, leading the Irish releases alongside Sarah Crean and David Geraghty. Elsewhere, Actress and Beck return with big new albums, and there are records from Empress Of, Boy Harsher, Carly Rae Jepsen, Jake Xerxes Fussell and more.

Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.

New Albums + EPs

Album of the week

 The Mary Wallopers – Paddywhackery

The third album from The Mary Wallopers, the Dundalk trad-folk crew who have become one of the most beloved and riotous live bands in Ireland. Built on rebel songs, drinking ballads with a strong political and social justice stance, their rowdy take on Irish folk is only getting more big-band, and it’s easy to see why they are playing a huge 3Arena show in Dublin this December.

Paddywhackery was recorded with James Skelly of The Coral and led by the single ‘Crowns Of England’, Paddywhackery  is Irish rock’n’roll – trad-wearing pint-drinking entertaining raucous good time never too far from a truth – it’s a line that the band have walked the best of their peers – maintaining a humorous disposition and a raucous cutting edge.

With the full band oin board – Ken Mooney on drums, Róisín Barrett’s on bass, Catriona Gribben on accordion and Finnian O’Connor’s on pipes and whistles, there is an unmistakable parallel musically to The Pogues, but the Hendy brothers don’t have the punk sneer of MacGowan but they have his spirit.

Of the title they say:

“It’s mainly about the fact that people would call us “paddywhackery” because we are too Irish or whatever, but it’s all very fucking hip to be Irish the last couple of years, and maybe that’s performative too, it’s very sincere. If all you do is serious songs, it sterilises everything. It becomes like there’s only one human emotion and its seriousness. People are terrified of being laughed at. If people are going to call us paddywhackery anyway, we might as well just call the album Paddywhackery. So its more of a “fuck you” than anything else. We want to spread like a virus and destroy anyone who thinks they are above The Mary Wallopers”

Beck – Ride Lonesome

A new album from Beck, and his first of all-original material since 2019’s Hyperspace. Few artists have shape-shifted as restlessly across the last three decades, and a fresh set of songs from one of alternative music’s great chameleons is always worth attention. It is his second release of the year, following January’s covers-and-rarities collection and Ride Lonesome is a return to his classic singer-songwriting strand, and as the title suggests it’s a bit of a dusty lonesome cowboy vibe.

Sarah Crean – Heirloom

The second album from Sarah Crean, the Brighton-based Irish artist. Entirely created by women and loosely based on the myth of Calypso, Heirloom uses that story to explore turmoil, life-altering change and the reconciliation that follows. A thoughtful, richly conceived second record.

‘’I started writing this album 3 years ago, during the first few months of a move to London. It began in a studio, with a team of people, until I got dropped by my label and kind of had to start all over again. These 10 tracks have each changed exponentially since I first wrote them, and the final products being produced solely by me feel really special. With the help of an incredible collective of women, I was able to make a record I feel deeply proud of, one that is fully mine”.

“Women and non-binary individuals have created every single piece of Heirloom – every single thing you hear or see. I was fed up being in rooms with solely male musicians, fighting to be listened to, wishing not to be sexualised and undermined. So I resorted to creating the space myself, ones that felt safer and more encouraging of women in music. The idea of making an album about intrinsically female experiences through a female perspective without women at the forefront creatively felt absolutely berserk and almost lazy. I wanted to do it carefully and in the correct way, even if it did take 3 years”. 

Boy Harsher – Get Mean

The new album from Boy Harsher, the American duo whose sleek, cinematic darkwave pairs pulsing synths with Jae Matthews’ breathy menace. A favourite on goth and industrial dancefloors, they sharpen their sound further on Get Mean, built for late nights and low light.

Empress Of – Dream House

The new album from Empress Of, the Los Angeles-based producer and singer Lorely Rodriguez, whose bilingual, emotionally raw electropop has built one of the most consistent catalogues in the field. Dream House takes its cue from the LA Wildfires of 2025 which destroyed the Rodriguez family home.

With the house now rebuilt, the album is a reflection on loss and heartache, informed by such upheaval – with a positive air throughout songs which are preoccupied with the rebuild of their lives. Her mother Reina pops up again as she has on previous albums and Blood Orange and Cecile Believe feature.

Carly Rae Jepsen – Day And Night

A double album from Carly Rae Jepsen, the Canadian pop auteur whose devoted cult following has long prized her run of shimmering, heart-on-sleeve synth-pop. Day And Night is another set of her impeccably crafted, emotionally maximal pop songs.

Actress – Radical Frame

The new album from Actress, the project of London producer Darren Cunningham, one of the most singular voices in British music – work of a Black avant-garde. Cunningham makes smeared, dubbed-out, deliberately degraded electronic music that always feels like it is dissolving at the edges, and Radical Frame is another dispatch from his strange and rewarding world. Casisdead and Rainy Miller feature on this album, the latest in his run of inter-dimensional electronic compositions.

Freak Slug – Amulet

The second album from the Manchester-based dream-pop artist known as Freak Slug, with a woozy, lo-fi blend of dream-pop, R&B and bedroom alternative music. The followup to the 2023 debut I Blow Out Big Candles Out, on Future Classic, Amulet is a hazy listen.

Amulet came from a spiritual reading Genovese undertook while searching for answers to feelings she’d held since childhood, one she read as a link to a past life as a healer, a woman forced to hide her gifts in an age that feared them. So Xenya Genovese made a record about inheriting pain, intuition and strength, and about embracing the parts of herself she once kept hidden.

David Geraghty – Komorebi

A new album from David Geraghty, the composer, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of Bell X1, who finds time between bands to make his own singer-songwriter synth-pop. Led by the single ‘Valentine’ and touched with soul, Komorebi shares its title, coincidentally, with another Irish album out this month (Swimmers Jackson), but stakes out its own warm, melodic ground.

18 Sep – Spin Dizzy Records Album Launch, Dublin (6pm)  19 Sep – Steamboat Records, Limerick (afternoon) 19 Sep – Music Zone, Cork (evening) 25 Sep – The Ruby Room, Mayo 26 Sep – Crusheen, Clare 02 Oct – Theatre Royal Waterford 03 Oct – Lucas Records, Waterford 08 Oct – Cleere’s, Kilkenny 09 Oct – Kasbah, Limerick 22 Oct – Crescent Arts, Belfast Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto – 12 Conversations

A posthumous collaborative album from Ryuichi Sakamoto with Alva Noto, drawn from sessions recorded in late 2022, the same period that produced Sakamoto’s final solo album 12, shortly before his death in March 2023. Carsten Nicolai has framed these previously unreleased exchanges not as remembrance but continuation, a final chapter in one of contemporary music’s great partnerships, pairing Sakamoto’s sustain-drenched piano with Nicolai’s fine-grained electronics. A hushed, moving farewell.

Frankie Rose – HILA

The new album from Frankie Rose, the American musician once of Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls and Crystal Stilts, and now a distinctive voice in her own right. Where 2023’s Love as Projection opened outward, HILA turns inward: her most impressionistic and experimental record yet, a set of songs about loss and what persists beyond ordinary perception, with Justin Welch of Elastica and Lush on drums.

Jake Xerxes Fussell – The Old Beloved Path

The new album from Jake Xerxes Fussell, the Georgia-born folk singer and guitarist who breathes fresh life into traditional Southern songs. Made in North Carolina with producer Ben Whiteley and following 2024’s acclaimed When I’m Called, The Old Beloved Path is more of his warm, unhurried, deeply rooted interpretive classic American folk songs.

LIVE
8 Oct – Cyprus Avenue Cork
9 Oct – Róisín Dubh Galway
10 Oct – Button Factory Dublin

Son Lux – Out Into

A new album from Son Lux, the endlessly inventive trio best known for their Oscar-nominated score to Everything Everywhere All at Once. Their music fuses experimental electronics, orchestral drama and fractured pop into something genuinely singular, and Out Into is another ambitious dispatch from a band who don’t sit still.

Dave Angel – A Time And Place

A new album from Dave Angel, the British techno pioneer who has been making jazz-inflected, deep and driving electronic music since the early ’90s. A Time And Place is his first full-length for the seminal Belgian label R&S Records.

Agnes Obel – The Meaning of Flowers

The new album from the Danish composer and singer Agnes Obel, whose hushed, chamber-pop songcraft has drawn a devoted following over the last fifteen years. Now on Deutsche Grammophon, The Meaning of Flowers promises the same spare, spellbinding blend of piano, strings and layered voice.

Martin Luke Brown – life & death etc

The third album from Martin Luke Brown, the British singer-songwriter and a founding member of the supergroup FIZZ (with Orla Gartland, dodie and Greta Isaac). Made just a year after 2025’s man oh man !, and his first since leaving the major-label world, life & death etc stretches his indie-soul palette into richer territory: janky-but-tender soundscapes, subtle psych textures and cracked-out country, shot through with a love of ’60s and ’70s songcraft. Led by the piano-driven single ‘highest high’, it finds humour in grief and joy in sadness, giving the small, everyday moments that make up a life real weight. He plays Whelan’s in Dublin in December.

Rhiannon Giddens – Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

The seventh album from Rhiannon Giddens, the Pulitzer and Grammy-winning musician and scholar who has done more than almost anyone to trace the Black and folk lineages of American music. Recorded live with few overdubs at a house in Louisiana and co-produced with Dirk Powell, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, its title from Emily Dickinson, is a warm, communal celebration of people drawing strength from one another.

Matt Berninger – Type It Up EP

A new EP from Matt Berninger, the baritone frontman of The National, following last year’s solo album Get Sunk with covers of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’,  The Velvet Underground’s ‘Who Loves the Sun’ and three new songs.

Also released this week A.S. Fanning – Unbearable Miracle B-Sides EP beabadoobee – Pylon Blood Red Shoes – Stay Lonely Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Ghosts of American Psychonauts (live album) Chaka Khan- Chakzilla Chasing Abbey – Cyber Celt David Byrne – Who Is The Sky? digital deluxe Echo & the Bunnymen – Apples For Isaac Emma Ruth Rundle – These Killing Times Kid Loco – Terrible Blues (The Lost Album, 1996) Kristin Hersh – Sugar on Blackstone Lizzy McAlpine – Angel Miley Cyrus – Bass Persuades Morabeza Tobacco – It’s Only Heaven Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts – Second Song Orville Peck – Mule Palace – Ox Rodrigo y Gabriela – OurHome Slothrust – What They Grow in the Garden Slow Pulp – Melodie Son Lux – Out Into Tove Lo – Estrus

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.

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