All the contenders for the Northern Ireland Music Prize album of the year 2025

Our new Belfast-based writer Chris Mullan reviewed the contenders for the best album at this year's Northern Ireland Music prize in a Substack blog. Now that we know the winner, how did he get on?

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With this year’s Output Conference well behind us and the city currently in the full embrace of its annual Sound Of Belfast showcase, only one date remains circled on the proverbial cultural (music) calendar for 2025 - the Northern Ireland Music Prize. Setting up shop once again at the iconic Ulster Hall on the 12th November, twelve artists are vying for the prestigious PPL Album Of The Year title.

And So I Watch You From Afar, Ciaran Lavery, George Houston, Jordan Adetunji, Joshua Burnside, Junk Drawer, OR:LA, RÓIS, Sister Ghost, Snow Patrol, Taylor Lally and The Wood Burning Savages all boast bodies of work that must be commended for rising above the noise of the other 80+ albums that were submitted for the category this year. Below, I offer my take on each of the contenders, hopefully providing a much needed honest and unfiltered opinion on each release. Something that, in the small world of Northern Ireland’s music industry, can be difficult to tease out sometimes.

(You can read Chris' original substack article here)

And So I Watch You From Afar - MEGAFAUNA

A piece of work quite unlike anything ASIWYFA have released previously. The knife-like pointed guitar still shreds upon a wall of sound that would have Phil Spector’s wig blow across the North Channel faster than the Rathlin Island ferry, but the slower numbers seem to have proliferated on Megafauna - they each exude a genuine experience and maturity and smooth the edges out just enough that you may even be successful in slipping this on to your next dinner party playlist.

Standout track: Me and Dunbar

Ciaran Lavery - Light Entertainment

A subversive an album if there ever was one - Light Entertainment from Ciaran Lavery belies the dread-soaked undercurrent that traverses through these 11 tidy songs. If you ever wondered what the apocalypse would sound like if scored to lo-fi beats, here you have it. With the courage to still offer up a hook in the middle of the chaos, Lavery offers a career best here.

Standout track: Honeybun

George Houston - TODC

This is the current sound of queer, rural Ireland; the only tragedy is that it has taken until 2025 to hear it. Houston must be commended here for the ambition on this, his fourth full-length release. Although never boring, TODC sometimes suffers under the weight of its sheer reach in sounds and lyricism. Perhaps the most daring of the 12 albums on this list. In with a very good shout of taking the prize on the night.

Standout track: Drag Queen

Jordan Adetunji - A Jaguar’s Dream

With KEHLANI appearing on Barack Obama’s (admittedly performative) end of year music list for 2024 and a Grammy nomination for Best Melodic Rap Performance in the same year, there is nothing I can write here to either hold Adetunji up or tear him down. Personally, I love this debut. It’s eclectic, motivated and fun. It’s a rap album in beats and lyrical content but embraces the somewhat overlooked hook-laden pop-R&B of the late 2000s. A triumph and a welcome ambassador for music from Northern Ireland in 2025.

Standout track: 305

Joshua Burnside - Teeth of Time

Faraway and immediate at the same time, Joshua Burnside brings us Teeth of Time. As ever with our uneasy narrator, the instrumentation seeks to soothe while the spoken word often bludgeons. Feeling somewhat in on the act as Burnside sings of the complexities of countenancing, among other things, bringing life in to this world, this is an essential companion piece to those really growing up. If you know what that really means.

Standout track: Ghost of the Bloomfield Road

Junk Drawer - Days of Heaven

The Mull It Over pick for the PPL Album Of The Year

Junk Drawer arrive tripped out and acid-washed on their sophomore album, Days of Heaven. Losing almost all inhibitions, this is the glorious sound of a band succumbing to the only real inspiration there is anyway - truth. Well, truth and an alternative Ulster, of course. Although preceded by a fantastic debut, this feels like the Junk Drawer that we’ve been waiting for.

Standout track: Nids Niteca

OR:LA - Trusting Theta

Although clocking in at a nippy 35 minutes, OR:LA’s Trusting Theta traverses Irish and Greek mythologies through percussive rhythms and hypnotic synths to elicit something near catharsis on her fabric Originals debut. Showcasing contemporaries like SOAK, Mary Lake and Eliza Rose who only serve to elevate the record, this is a piece of music to be enjoyed as much through headphones, as on the dancefloor.

Standout track: Slay The Beast

RÓIS - MO LÉAN

Despite Chris picking Junk Drawer as the PPL Album Of The Year, it was RÓIS who won big by walking away with the prize as well as live Act Of The Year.

A spiritual experience, to put it lightly. RÓIS presents MO LÉAN - an experimental yet traditional masterpiece. Reviving the ancient Irish tradition of keening, the ritual wailing of grief, atop a soundscape of folk and modern electronic elements, RÓIS pulls Ireland quite happily into the 21st Century. Ireland is rich with talent at the moment; it is also rich with inspiration that pre-dates our pop output. This is the latest, and maybe best proof of that yet.

Standout track: CAOINE

Sister Ghost - Beyond The Water

Astutely mining the 90s alternative rock canon to inspire her debut album on Third Bar Records, Sister Ghost’s Shannon Dolores O’Neill delivers a tour-de-force of hooky rock anthems. A flag in the cap of the Oh Yeah Centre’s youth programme Scratch My Progress, O’Neill brims with assured confidence on Beyond The Water. It is early doors, and more excitement is saved for what comes next, as Sister Ghost learns to take the inspirations and turn them into something completely their own.

Standout track: Dark Matter

Snow Patrol - The Forest Is The Path

Thirty years into a stellar career, Snow Patrol’s eighth studio album The Forest Is The Path saw them top the UK Album Charts for the first time since Eyes Open in 2006. The usual earnest and sweeping alt-rock tunes are buoyed by a slick production, if at times you feel you’ve heard it all before. More than deserving of their place on this list, lest we succumb to the ideals of small-minded gatekeeping that values obscurity over artistry.

Standout track: All

Taylor Lally - Taylor Lally

A honeyed blend of alt-pop, indie folk, and lo-fi textures, Taylor Lally’s self-titled debut album is both mature and fresh-sounding at the same time. It is rare to hear an artist come out so fully formed on a debut, but Lally pulls it off masterfully here. A wonderful listen whether you’re opening a second glass of wine on a rainy winter evening or making pancakes with your daughter on an easy Sunday morning. Leaning on the Americana style sometimes employed here could have been a misstep in the wrong hands. Stunning.

Standout track: Round and Round

The Wood Burning Savages - Hand To Mouth

Anger. Hope. Despair. Ambition. The Wood Burning Savages returned in 2024 with Hand To Mouth, an expectedly political supercharge. Born in the fires of a cost-of-living crisis and far right lean across Europe and America, not to mention the overcoming of a light-threatening illness for frontman Paul Connolly - Hand To Mouth feels like the essential and welcome return of one of our finest rock bands. We can only hope to avoid such another long wait between records. Long live The Wood Burning Savages.

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