Music Reviews
Albums, singles and live performances analysed beyond the hype. We explore artistry, authorship and the systems influencing what gets heard.
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8/10 *Part of our throwback album review series. With Open Wide, Inhaler finally sound less concerned with escaping the shadow hanging over them and more focused on becoming the band they were probably always heading towards. For years, lazy discourse around the Dublin four-piece revolved around lineage rather than music. But by the time Open…
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Throwback Review 10/10 *Part of our throwback album review series. Looking back now, The Clearing feels like the album where Wolf Alice stopped trying to prove themselves to anybody. By the time the record arrived in 2025, the band had already survived the strange modern trajectory from indie darlings to Mercury Prize winners to one…
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8/10 There is something quietly cinematic about “Darlin’”, the new release from Irish collective AINM, but not in the overly polished or self-conscious way that term often gets thrown around. Instead, the track feels expansive because it understands atmosphere. It understands restraint. It allows space to exist between the notes. Originally beginning life as a…
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9/10 There’s a very fine line when artists cover Fix You. Get it wrong and it becomes karaoke wrapped in expensive production. Get it right and you uncover something hidden inside the song that listeners forgot was there. Sonaírí achieved the latter. Irish duo Sonaírí, consisting of Irish soprano Amie Dyer and tenor David Corr,…
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8/10 Daði Freyr has always occupied a curious space in modern pop. Too eccentric to be conventional chart-pop, too emotionally sincere to be dismissed as novelty, and too musically sharp to fade into the endless algorithmic sludge currently swallowing the genre whole. Like many others, you may have first discovered Daði in 2020 with his…
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Our Rating 8/10 There is a quiet precision to Ailbhe Reddy’s Kiss Big that sets it apart from much of the current indie landscape. It does not compete for attention. It earns it gradually. The record is built on restraint. Arrangements are deliberately minimal, allowing space for both vocal delivery and lyrical detail to carry…
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Our Rating: 10/10 There is a fine line between evolution and repetition in pop, and Olivia Rodrigo has spent the last few years walking it carefully. “Drop Dead” lands as a calculated step forward, not a reinvention, but a tightening of what already works. At surface level, the track holds all the hallmarks of her…
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There is a particular kind of pop song that does not just arrive; it carries people with it. With “So Long, Solo”, Collette Brady-McEntee steps firmly into that space. Written within a collaborative songwriting environment and shaped by the hands of experienced writers, the track holds both scale and substance. It is built on connection,…
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Dótts O’Connor sits in that space Irish music does best when it’s honest about itself. There’s no overproduction of identity, no chasing of trend cycles, just a steady pull toward storytelling that feels lived in rather than constructed. His work leans into narrative, not as a stylistic choice but as a necessity, shaped by place,…
The Industry Review 