Irish music's golden age glittered even more and it was a pretty stellar year on the international front - here are our top records of 2023
Top 5 Irish albums of the year
CMAT - Crazymad, For Me
Blanch woman Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson was very much the Irish breakthrough act of 2022 and 2023 proved an even more stellar year for the kitschy pop darling. A genuine rapport with her fanbase saw her gigs become mass celebrations and appearances on The Graham Norton Show and Later . . . helped seal the deal for her second album Crazymad, For Me. If her debut, If My Wife New I'd Be Dead, frothed with fizzy country pop, this goes deeper and with plenty of emotional weight, too. She does tacky brilliantly, but journeys into the sadness at the heart of the best country music. This personal post-mortem is full of little moments of heartbreak, prairie-wide production and CMAT's magpie eye for pop culture references. This one aims for the stars and bigger venues.
Mik Pyro - Exit Pyro
Will the real Mik Pyro please pick himself up off the floor. The former head merry prankster with The Republic of Loose drops his bawdy, swaggering and frequently drunk "emperor of bloviation" alter ego to reveal his, well, gentler side. Long in danger of becoming an urban myth or worse, more delayed than the building of a children's hospital, Pyro’s solo debut album finally hit the decks this year and it was worth its weight in crumpled up beer cans and fag ends. It may not be what you’re expecting. On Exit Pyro, the cosmic bar stool philosopher goes back to the country and folk elements he soaked up in his childhood. It’s a long and hugely entertaining listen that really shows what a musical polymath Pyro is - from the very funny Paddy rap of Accounting, a song that sees fiddle and trouncing piano socked in the jaw by a funky banjo solo, to the fantastic Flu Crow, a real soul revue of a song, with fractured and atonal blues guitar that sounds like something from Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones. He was always Behan meets Bukowski but something of the soul of Luke Kelly also lurks in Pyro’s solo songs. Read full review.
Brigid Mae Power - Dream From The Deep Well
The fourth album from the London-born, Galway-raised singer weaves a magical tapestry of strummed guitars, pianos, strings, pump organs and diverting sound textures but it’s her voice that will really stop you in your tracks. She sounds like Mazy Star meets Cowboy Junkies on the drowsy single Counting Down and you may also be reminded of Laura Marling and maybe the elemental sound of PJ Harvey’s masterpiece Let England Shake. This is re-imagined folk music with strings, steel guitar, horns and mellotron adding to its baroque beauty. Dream From The Deep Well blurs the lines between the modern and the traditional.
Grian Chatten - Chaos For The Fly
"Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." That pretty pithy line from Charles Addams, the late American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous characters and the Addams Family, is the jumping off point for this brief solo album from Fontaines D.C. singer Chatten. Having set up a blistering pace along with his band with three extremely good albums in four years, the songs seem to be pouring from the 28-year-old Skerries man. This is a largely melancholic, acoustic, and confessional collection with some simple, somewhat childlike rhyming couplets. He said, "I’ve got a couple of exaggerated aspects of my soul that I wanted to express" and he sure sounds more vulnerable on songs that swap the furious guitar fusillades of Fontaines for folky guitar, electronic flourishes, brass and duets with his fiancée, Georgie Jesson and a more, dare we say it, hushed vocal. These solo songs soften Chatten jagged edges. Chaos For The Fly is all desolate, sepia-toned late-night reverie but it’s somehow also life-affirming.
Róisín Murphy - Hit Parade
When it arrived in September, Róisín Murphy’s sixth album was in danger of being submerged by the outcry over comments she made about puberty blockers on her private Facebook page. We’re not here to rehearse what she said but it wasn’t the first time an artist has had an opinion on a contentious and highly emotive issue (Sinéad O’Connor springs to mind for some reason). Either way, Hit Parade is the single-minded Murphy at her kaleidoscopic best. A woman of many faces and many voices, her elastic approach to music has always been about endless possibilities and whether she’s lost in fluttering dance pop on CooCool (a breezy Mimi Ripperton meets Isaac Hayes vibe) or going under on icy the Kate Bush-like Eureka, Hit Parade always sounds alive to the future. This career best from the Arklow woman is a lot of love and a lot of fun and whether you #standwithroisinmurphy or not, it would be a shame not to dance with her. Read full review.
Top 5 international albums of the year
Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS
For Olivia Rodrigo, the sophomore slump never seemed to be an issue. She sold 17 million copies of her critically acclaimed debut Sour, spent nine weeks at No 1 in Ireland with her very first single Drivers Licence and she is the youngest ever artist to debut at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Suffice to say, GUTS was one of the biggest records of the year. What was a supremely gifted young singer and songwriter to do? Well, her answer was simple - more of the same, except harder, faster and funnier. GUTS (and that’s all CAPs, pop kids!) is a righteous one-fingered salute to idiot exes and music execs but it also charts the pains of negotiating instant mega fame and the projections of the media, good and bad. This new collection of hugely melodic guitar anthems embraces emo, grunge, pop rock. Delicious opening track All American Bitch does ye olde quiet/loud switcheroo from acoustics and chirpy mandolin to Avril Lavigne trash rock as she trades verses of happiness and light with a darker, punkier sneer "I know my age and I act like it" she hollers. Not that she ever was, but it’s clear that Olivia Rodrigo is not willing to play nice anymore. Read full review.
Jessie Ware - That Feels Good!
Ever in pursuit of the pleasure principal, Londoner Jessie Ware’s fifth album takes to the dancefloor in an unashamedly seventies Disco album - with a decidedly 21st lustre. Her superb vocals cruise through a neon-lit series of tracks with huge choruses and killer melodies that mark Ware out as one of the most exciting pop stars around right now. You won’t hear a better anthem this year than the house music indebted Free Yourself and or a more bittersweet torch song than Hello Love. That Feels Good! drips with class and unbounded desire. This is a stone cold modern classic.
Blur - The Ballad of Darren
"I f***ed up . . . every generation has it’s gilded poseurs," sings Damon Albarn, half defiant and half sheepish, on the best song on Blur’s new album and their ninth since they first scampered out of Blighty 33 years ago. This is St Charles Square, a squalling, bug-eyed fever dream that sounds like Bowie-era Scary Monsters meets The Specials in a house of horrors. It’s a real phantasmagoria and already belongs somewhere at the very top of the Blurography. There; s plenty more where that came from on The Ballad of Darren. Very much in the sad ballad man tradition of Blur world, they’re up on melancholy hill for sure. Middle-aged spread and rheumy-eyed rapprochement between old friends is distilled throughout. Older, wiser, and wounded, Blur are wrapping themselves in the cotton wool of resigned contentment. Inertia and ennui has rarely sounded more blissful. Read full review.
Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
Manhattan singer, producer, and songwriter Caroline Polachek has been described as Gen Z's Kate Bush but this tremendous fourth album puts her in a sphere all her own. A former member of indie darlings Chairlift, Polachek makes organic sounding avant garde electronica and Desire, I Want To Turn Into You embraces bagpipes, children's choirs, Spanish guitar, trip-hop, Celtic folk, and early '00s-style radio pop. With huge, airy production, this super slick futuristic collection just does not sit still. Some songs are gossamer light, others have a menacing industrial clang. It starts with Welcome to My Island, a moonstruck aria of primal howling before becoming a digital bubble bath, and journey ever deeper into sonic experientialism. Drum and bass workout Fly to You even features Grimes and Dido and perhaps only Polachek could unite two very different artists and make it work so very, very well.
Geese - 3D Country
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Just what we always wanted - a concept album about an uptight cowboy wandering through the desert after taking psychedelic drugs and watching the world around him - and his concept of the self - unravel. There was a lot of buzz in 2023 about this rock - with a capital R - band from Brooklyn. Like an acid gumbo of Kings of Leon, combustible Texan band White Denim and Greta Van Fleet at their most frazzled, 3D Country is old school, volcanic, bugged-out, and pretty damn wild. They range from snaky voodoo rock-outs to sombre ballads and vocals that would strip the paint off the studio walls. Most songs end in a carnage of charred chords and battered drums, and they have a real knack for stylistic leaps that will wrongfoot you - from vampy theatrics to jazz rock and warped country lullabies. More cowbell!
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
