Divine Comedy: Rainy Sunday Afternoon (Divine Comedy) ★★★★☆
Every day is like a rainy Sunday afternoon, at least on Neil Hannon’s new offering, his first studio album since the jaunty Office Politics, from 2019. Despite the somewhat less jocular mood, so high is the quality – as with pretty much everything that Hannon turns his hand to – that it’s a pleasure to be in his company. I Want You is as brooding as it can get, with a piano motif and a televisual orchestral sweep; The Last Time I Saw the Old Man tenderly outlines his father’s declining health; the title track is an exercise in light-fingered baroque pop; and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and the instrumental Can’t Let Go pile on the pathos with urbane if anguished panache.
D Cullen: City Soundscapes (self-released) ★★★★☆
D Cullen’s biggest goal with City Soundscapes was to make an album “full of big guitars, big drums, inventive sonics, lyrics that come from the heart.” To which we say: “Back of the net.” City Soundscapes thrums to the beats, bounces, ripples and jump-starts of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Fountains of Wayne, Jellyfish and Crowded House. Cullen – a songwriter who has been under the radar for far too long – is a guitar-pop perfectionist. On an album of gems, it’s hard to single out the best tracks, but the likes of Young Men, Rest of Them, and Diffuse Reflection reach for the stars and grip them tightly.
God Knows: A Future of the Past (Narolane Records) ★★★★☆
Formerly of the Choice Music Prize winners Rusangano Family, the Zimbabwean-Irish rapper God Knows imbues his long-awaited debut album with hard-earned advice. (On Naked Ambition Has a Price he quotes from a graduation speech that the US supreme-court chief justice, John Roberts, gave in 2017: “I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice”). The album continues in acutely aware form socially and historically, across a variety of musical styles, from jazz, African and traditional Irish to electronic, soul and drill. As for delivery, God Knows is fast and fluid but never frenetic: hear him on Ode to the Ancestors, Hubris, and Carpe Diem and marvel at how he does it.
Laura Elizabeth Hughes: Knots and Echoes (self-released) ★★★★★
Figuring things out, pulling at threads and dodging emotional pitfalls are at the core of the music of Laura Elizabeth Hughes, who, after many years of sporadic appearances, finally releases her debut album. The Dublin songwriter has created a work of deftly layered creativity that weaves (occasional) spoken word with a folk/pop sophistication that is unlikely to be matched this year. Songs such as Intro (Brother), 2AM, No Man’s Land, The Fires, and Another Side of Conversation cover the spectrum of life’s push and pull to such an extent that you won’t be able to stop your eyes welling up.
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Gavin James: Gold Rush (Sony Music NL) ★★★☆☆
Very few Irish songwriters can take a song from scratch to stratospheric – and Gavin James was there before an influx of other Irish performers arrived to share, if not steal, some of his thunder. His first album since The Sweetest Part, from 2022, is a hybrid of certified anthemic crowd pleasers (the title track, Cherry Cola, Storm Warning, Where Are You Now, Gone in the Morning, Heavy) and sweet-spot ballads that snip the heartstrings (Afterlife, She Makes Me, Holy Water, Once in a Lifetime). No real surprises, then, but James’ songs here (which he also produced) are more assured than they have ever been.
