This week’s edition of Recent Releases includes music across pop, rock, folk, traditional, indie, electronic, contemporary and hip hop. For more on the artists and to listen, click on the links below. To submit your music, email newreleases [at] journalofmusic.com.

Local Boy Climbs the Ladder is the latest release from singer-songwriter and producer Jake Hurley, performing as Local Boy. The ten-track bedroom-pop record was released last week and is the third and final body of work in the artist’s trilogy, including previous works Local Boy Ruins Everything (2019) and Local Boy Helps Himself (2021).

Traditional trio Alfi this week released ‘The Whistling Thief’, the first single to come from their upcoming album Say Old Man, due for release in spring 2023. The work is an arrangement of a traditional song written by Samuel Lover in the 1800s that piper Fiachra Meek learned from the singing of Seán Mac Donnchadha on the album The Lark in the Morning, a recording was made by his grandmother, Diane Hamilton. 

Louth Contemporary Music Society has this month released a new recording, Live from the Spirit Store Dundalk,  featuring Icelandic musicians Bára Gísladóttir (double bass) and Skúli Sverrisson (electric bass). They were recorded during their performance as part of the LCMS festival in June 2022. 

Dublin singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson last week released her second album Smiling Like an Idiot on Faction Records (23 September). The album follows Richardson’s 2019 debut First Prize Bravery – which was nominated for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize – and includes singles ‘Archie’, ‘Shark Eyes’ and ‘Hard to Fake It’. 

Earlier this month, Susan O’Neill shared her new EP Now You See It on the Star House Collective label. The six-track record is the follow up to the singer’s collaborative album with Mick Flannery, In The Game (2021), and features the title single ‘Truth Can Be Kind’. 

The Hedge Maze and The Spade is the second album by Cork-based ambient, electronic and experimental songwriter Trick Mist, released last week on Pizza Pizza Records. 

Farpoint Recordings has this month released a digital reissue of As the quiet crow flies, the 2016 album by The Quiet Club (Danny McCarthy and Mick O’Shea) and crOw (Cathal Roche and Ian Wilson). This edition features a newly-released 24 minute work that was recorded at Library House in Cork in October 2016. 

UK folk artist John Smith has shared ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’, a new single featuring Lisa Hannigan taken from his sixth studio album, The Fray, which was released last year on Commoner Records. 

Also released this month is ‘Laundry’, the new single from singer-songwriter Farah Elle (14 September); Wayfare, the debut album from Irish-Dutch singer Patrick Stefan (23 September); ‘I Won’t Turn My Back on You’ (co-written by Carl Corcoran and New York-based songwriter James Kelly), the latest single from vocal group Ardú (16 September); Belfast songwriter Joshua Burnside’s latest release ‘Late Afternoon in the Meadow (1887)’ (16 September); Limerick singer-songwriter Kellie Lewis’ track ‘Flashback To 18’ (23 September); and the new single from singer-songwriter Anna Mieke, ‘Mannequin’. Instrumental rock act Overhead the Albatross have also released new music this month, the single ‘L’appel Du Vide’ (23 September); and Rachel Mae Hannon has released the electro-pop single ‘Breathe’.  

Listen to a playlist of all recent releases below. To submit your release, email newreleases [at] journalofmusic.com.

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