Choice Music Prize: Profiles of the records in the running for Irish Album of the Year

CMAT and Fontaines DC are among the favourites for a prize that will be announced on Thursday, March 9, at a live event at Vicar Street

Wed, 08 Mar, 2023 - 21:00

Eoghan O’Sullivan

CMAT - If My Wife New I’d Be Dead

She wanted to be a cowboy, baby, and after helping a lot of people through lockdown with Instagram Live sessions and hilarious videos that announced her to the world, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson looks well on her way to achieving her goal of being the biggest popstar in the world. It helps that she’s an incredible songwriter (presumably helped by a workshop she attended in London with Charli XCX), opening track Nashville an allegory for dealing with depression, for example. Across the album, there’s references to chicken fillet rolls, dance-offs, and dreams of affairs with the late director Peter Bogdanovich. Welcome to the pop culture and country-infused world of CMAT.

Anna Mieke - Theatre

The second album from the Wicklow artist takes you on a journey - literally. On the very first line of the record, she sings of “Vague memories, in the narrow streets of Lausanne”, while in the chorus of the second track, she recalls the “London sun, burning our skin”. It’s a lush soundscape - Anna Mieke, whose gorgeous track Warped Window closed out the first episode of Normal People, says she wanted to create “a sound world to escape to, built from moments in time”. influences range from Talking Heads and The Mamas & the Papas to Orchestre Baobab, Nusrat Ali Khan, West African kora, and traditional Brazilian dance, while musicians who lend a hand include Brían Mac Gloinn (Ye Vagabonds) and Rozi Plain (This Is The Kit).

Aoife Nessa Frances - Protector

Dublin singer-songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances decamped to Clare and Kerry in spring 2020 (during you-know-what) to make this breakup album that serves as spiritual experience. She says she was “slowly putting myself back together and watching the ‘protector’ in me grow much bigger. Protector acknowledges the part of myself that steers me towards a brighter path." Titles like This Still Life and Emptiness Follows might point to her feelings at the time. Like Anne-Mieke’s album, Protector feels woozy and dream-like as Frances searches for the light, Conor O’Brien’s (Villagers) flugelhorn helping guide her.

Dermot Kennedy - Sonder

It feels like half of Ireland will be seeing Dermot Kennedy this summer, with dates at Thomond Park and Musgrave Park lined up, among others. The busker turned superstar is hard to resist - he has the type of voice you want to scream along with in the car on your own or on top of your best mate’s shoulders at his gigs. Something to Someone and Better Days are obvious evidence of that emotion. His ever-higher ascendency is something he was aware of when making second album Sonder: He told Apple Music: “I know there’s an acoustic singer-songwriter in me and so have to honour that, but then I also know we’re getting to a point where we’re playing really big venues and stadiums so want to have songs that thrive in that environment as well. I love making songs with big lush arrangements.”

Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia

The five-piece moved to London in recent years and, like Dermot Kennedy, their ascendency shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Skinty Fia is their third album since 2019, and easily their best. Their initial restlessness (“If you're a rockstar, pornstar, superstar, doesn't matter what you are, get yourself a good car, get outta here,” Grian Chatten sang on Boys in the Better Land) has developed into a Gallagher-like swagger. Album opener In ár gCroíthe go deo is six minutes long and begins a theme of the album - England’s suspicious view of Ireland. By penultimate song I Love You, Chatten tries on the hat of ‘voice of a generation’, fulminating at the “gall of Fine Gael and the fail of Fianna Fáil”.

Just Mustard - Heart Under

Darker than Fontaines DC, Dundalk five-piece Just Mustard have supported them on UK tours in the past and even signed to their label Partisan Records for their second album. Slowly squelching guitars underpin singer Katie Bell’s haunting vocals - they’ve supported the Cure before and are often compared to them. Her voice is really the star of the show here, on a self-assured record that’s perhaps garnered more praise and attention outside of Ireland.

Pillow Queens - Leave the Light On

A quickfire follow-up to a long-gestating debut album, Leave the Light On often sounds like In Waiting 2.0, with Pillow Queens’ hallmarks of religious symbolisms and coming-of-age ideals still evident. And yet the Dublin four-piece do it so well. Pamela Connolly’s rousing vocals sound more confident, the swell underneath crescendoing to glorious effect on the likes of opener Be By Your Side and Hearts & Minds. They also have aspirations akin to Dermot Kennedy: “It’s a lot more vulnerable than we've been before - but a confident vulnerability,” Connolly told the Irish Examiner a year ago. “There's a little bit of warmth there, but we wanted it to sound not out of place in a stadium, but also to be really... big and intimate.”

Sorcha Richardson - Smiling Like An Idiot

The best songwriting on this year’s Choice Prize shortlist is to be found all across Dublin singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson’s second album. Her debut album First Prize Bravery was a coming-of-age concept album, while here she’s exploring one relationship, which happened in conjunction with her moving back to her home city from New York; Richardson says the stakes in this album were higher, more melodramatic. Influences like Phoebe Bridgers shine through and while you wish Richardson would let loose with her voice every once in a while, every chorus here is irresistible, as scenes are painted with such descriptors that it feels like you’re right there with her, smiling like an idiot again.

The Mary Wallopers - The Mary Wallopers

If one of the signifiers of the Mercury Prize is a jazz nominee, the Choice equivalent is a trad album - they do well too, with Lankum and the Gloaming claiming the prize in previous years. This time it’s Dundalk trio the Mary Wallopers who get the trad nod. They’ve channelled their beloved, raucous, lockdown livestreams into a searing collection of pint-spilling ballads. But while rousing renditions of old favourites like Eileen Óg and Cod Liver Oil & the Orange Juice seem to come easy to them, it’s the ones bathed in pathos, like Building Up and Tearing England Down (not too dissimilar to the ideas underpinning Skinty Fia) and the gorgeous The Butcher Boy that linger in the memory. Their songbook is only just beginning.

Thumper - Delusions of Grandeur

With two drummers and four guitarists (!) it might seem obvious to say that Thumper are best experienced live. Theirs is a self-proclaimed maximalist wall of sound that’s taken them on tour across the UK and eastern Europe. Having grown out of singer Oisin Leahy-Furlong’s writer’s block about a decade ago, Thumper’s long-awaited debut album doesn’t wait around to be invited in: As noted in our review last year, “This is a record that kicks down the door, leaves mud all over your hall and then snatches from your hand the toast you’d just buttered.” They excel at long songs - four of the tracks here easily break the seven-minute mark - though some listeners might wish it was tighter (and quieter).

Our prediction:

Dermot Kennedy is the biggest name on the shortlist but is unlikely to find favour with the judges. We reckon it'll be a two-horse race between CMAT and Fontaines DC, with CMAT to edge proceedings by the tip of her cowboy hat.