HeadStuff

Dublin fiddle player Jayne Pomplas steps into the spotlight with her debut album of original songs. Jayne Pomplas has spent years as the person you want beside you in a session, playing and recording with everyone from The Chieftains to Lunatraktors. Released on 11 September, This Is How the World Ends is her first full-length album of original songs, and it’s a stunner. The record is whimsical without being unruly. Jayne Pomplas’ voice is unique, unforced and quietly spellbinding.

Say what you like about Ethan Hawke, he is as committed to his craft as any actor now working, and probably a good deal more than most. An exercise in pained transcendence (and uncompromising climate consciousness), First Reformed (2016) owed as much to Hawke’s visceral lead performance as to Paul Schrader’s grimly soul-searching script.

If Romance was Fontaines D.C. breaking down the door to mainstream success, Dopamine Chamber is them locking it behind them. This is the sound of a band settling into its throne at the pinnacle of an industry it has worked tirelessly to conquer. Gone are the Pogues-like ballads about Dublin City skies and the tales of being a “cool cool kid on the curbstone scene”. Instead, Ireland’s finest lean on atmosphere, synthesisers and angst-fuelled repetition.

Nostalgia is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can remind one of a simpler time in which the modern issues that the world is currently over-seasoned with had not yet existed. It can take one back to moments that they wish they could remain in forever. On the other it can be weaponised by forcing you to neglect certain facts of the past in order to focus on a tiny positive detail that you may hold a connection to. Take 2010 for example.

Medium Build (a.k.a. Nick Carpenter) has returned with a whopper of an album that unpacks much of what has happened to the musician over the past few years. After finding global success, the singer took time away to readjust. Touring with the likes of Lewis Capaldi, Role Model and Alex Warren led to what he described as a “menty b on stage” and a late diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Hollywood’s greatest onscreen egomaniac meets the industry’s most notable megalomaniac, and not a Coppola in sight. Digger arrives with all the bluster you’d expect from an Alejandro G. Iñárritu joint starring Tom Cruise, but the golden touch of Birdman and Amores Perros is sorely lacking from the Mexican auteur’s latest. What starts out as a broad farce about our overheating planet and the idiots running it segues into satire, surrealism, moral lessons and dystopian nightmare.

The Great Mouse Detective turns 40 in 2026 and in honour of it, and the many animated takes on Sherlock Holmes that have long played with homage and reinvention, this article will list the top 5 (of which there are many to choose from) animated adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is no stranger to adaptation in live action and animation. From references in Animaniacs to concepts in Scooby-Doo, the great detective’s silhouette, deerstalker and all, has become culturally embedded.

Gilla Band have always understood that a song doesn’t need to be pleasant to be enjoyable. On Pugnello, they take that idea to its logical extreme. The Dublin quartet’s fourth album is 42 minutes of grinding guitars, distorted bass, machine-like rhythms, shrieking electronics and Dara Kiely’s stream-of-consciousness vocals. It is abrasive, funny, stressful, danceable and occasionally heartbreaking. It is also their most controlled record.

Nobody’s Coming to Save You is Gurriers’ much-anticipated follow-up to their masterful debut, Come and See. Having formed during the pandemic, the five-piece led by vocalist Dan Hoff have carved out a reputation for high-octane hedonism, characterised by mosh-pit-ready gigs, an unapologetic sound and a willingness to speak their minds. Come and See was a triumph in its own right, with the interlude followed by “Top of the Bill” undoubtedly the record’s finest moment.

In three feature-length films since 2014, director Frank Berry has established himself as Ireland’s leading social realist. This is primarily a matter of substance, a concentration on contemporary Irish social issues. I Used to Live Here (2014) focused on youth mental health and suicide clusters. Michael Inside (2017) tackled marginalization and incarceration. Most recently, Aisha (2022) exposed the shortcomings of the asylum system.