Elaine Malone: 'The music scene in Cork was very open and inviting'

The Cork-based Limerick native has been nominated for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize album of the year with her band Pôt-pot

Wed, 28 Jan, 2026 - 08:00

Kate Demolder

Rare is the act who is compared to late, great Sinéad O’Connor. Particularly in Ireland, where O’Connor’s heady force is still felt in every facet of society, from politically active youth to whole communities of deep need.

However, one artist has recently made the cut. Elaine Malone, the Limerick-native, who in 2023, was billed by Hot Press as a “more DIY and punk-rock Sinéad.”

It’s one that the multi-instrumentalist doesn’t let get to her head. “I think there's always going to be comparisons amongst female artists,” she smiles wryly. “Unfortunately, that’s always going to be the way. At the same time, I can’t deny the level of influence her work has had on me… Politically, as a person, everything,” she pauses, before responding exactly how her hero might.

“You can't really take too much stock in these things… Because if you kind of hold on to what other people's opinions are, then you're going to stagnate, and won't progress in any way.”

Malone made her way to Cork at 17, and has since become engrossed in the DIY music scene. Since then, she’s become a mainstay, making her name in acts like Land Crabs, the now-defunct HEX, and the prolific Mantua.

“I’m very lucky that the music scene was very open and inviting and very eclectic,” she smiles. “When I arrived down, there were bands like The Altered Hours and Big City and [The] Bonk… and we were very lucky to have Plugd records, which was a mainstay for traveling bands that were coming through.”

In 2018, she released her debut EP, Land, a record that feels at once honed and intuitive, leading industry experts to take notice. Her first full length piece came, then, in 2023, by way of Pyrrhic, a singular artistic journey recorded by Cathal MacGabhann of The Altered Hours and defying genre entirely.

“ Pyrrhic felt largely like a feeling of frustration that I was trying to work out,” Malone says. “There’s a dichotomy of innocence and dissonance at play. There’s a desire to reject the feminine ideal of the songwriter, and with songs like The Hunger there was an ode to Karen Carpenter in there and how people are often destroyed by the world around them.”

The record showcased a variety of tone; rhythmic, melodic and emotional and shoegaze-heavy. “I’m indebted to shoegaze really,” she says of the genre that leans towards heavily distorted guitars and ethereal vocals. “And sort of the outlaw country stuff of Marty Robbins and Lee Hazelwood.”

In her own words, Malone’s various music projects all exist somewhere between psych-rock, drone, krautrock and post-punk, the latter two lending themselves to pôt-pot, the Velvet Underground-adjacent outfit comprising of Mykle Oliver Smith, Joe Armitage, Malone, Sara Leslie and Mark Waldron-Hyden. (“We perform in all black… and sunglasses.”)

Today, “the boys live in Lisbon and the girls live in Ireland,” meaning rehearsal time is planned weeks in advance. Clearly, it doesn’t affect the final result; in mid-January, the band’s debut album Warsaw 480km was announced as one of the ten Irish albums of the year – alongside such high-profile records as Amble’s Reverie, CMAT’s EURO-COUNTRY and Junior Brother’s The End– by the RTÉ Choice Music Prize.

On March 5, an 11-person judging panel industry insiders will judge to decide who wins. “I found out in my bedroom,” Malone smiles. “I rang Mark immediately and we both started squealing. Particularly because we mightn’t be a regular choice for something like the Choice Music Prize. So it’s kind of a surprise that a group like us, with the genres we work in, would ever be nominated.”

Warsaw 480km was released in September 2025 through Felte, an LA-based record label home to artists such as ERAAS, Ritual Howls, and Sextile. It now exists in the Irish music canon, not that that fazes Malone. In fact, some aspects of it makes her nervous

. “Fame… does not appeal to me,” she says. “The dream mis genuinely just to make art and survive. Awards are great, but it can’t matter too much. We’re just going to keep playing and doing what we’re doing and hopefully just having a good time.”

Before we go, Malone has a brief think about the words of advice she’d give to young artists. She pauses, before saying: “Sleep when you can, always eat the fruit in the green room and trust your instincts. The music industry is exploitative, for young girls in particular. So I would say, be vulnerable, trust yourself and… have a really good BS detector.”