Bell X1 set Good Bones for November and hit the road

Twelve tracks cut in ten days with Josh Kaufman land on Claddagh Records on 13 November; the Irish run opens at Wexford’s Spiegeltent on 17 October, with tickets already on sale.

Bell X1 have set their ninth studio album, Good Bones, for release on 13 November 2026 through Claddagh Records. The twelve-track set was recorded in just ten days at Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York and at Josh Kaufman’s home studio, with Kaufman producing and D. James Goodwin engineering, mixing and mastering.

It follows the recent singles ‘But First, Love’ and ‘Coughing Up Butterflies’. The record is described as instinctive and organic. Tracks include ‘Not Even Meant For Me’, ‘Born’, ‘A Peace Offering’, ‘Alone with Your Thoughts’, ‘Leaps And Bounds’, ‘Talking In Your Sleep’, ‘Atlas’, ‘Smile Like You Mean It’, ‘Stay Lost’ and ‘Still The Ocean’.

Heightened sessions in New York

The album was made in the aftermath of the death of the band’s friend and live collaborator Glenn Keating in March 2026. Frontman Paul Noonan described the sessions as “a very heightened, emotional, but beautiful time” and “profound and cathartic”. That framing places Good Bones less as a polished long-cycle project than as a concentrated burst of writing and playing under pressure, finished and mixed in the same short window that produced it.

Kaufman’s involvement and the split between Dreamland and his own room underline the speed of the work. Ten days is a deliberately tight brief for a full album; the finished track list runs to a dozen songs, with the two recent singles already giving listeners a first sense of the tone before the November release.

A long run from Celbridge

Bell X1 are an Irish rock band from County Kildare, the Celbridge group built around Paul Noonan, David Geraghty and Dominic Phillips. Their first album, Neither Am I, arrived in 2000. Music In Mouth followed in 2003, Flock in 2005 and the live document Tour De Flock in 2007. Blue Lights on the Runway came in 2009, Bloodless Coup in 2011 and the live set Field Recordings in 2012.

Later years brought further live cuts from St. Luke’s in 2022, the singles ‘Haint Blue’, ‘Spacewalk’ and ‘The Lobster’, and the 2023 album Merciful Hour. Good Bones is the next full studio statement after that record, three years on and more than a quarter-century after the band first put a long-player into the world. The move to Claddagh Records anchors the release on a label with deep Irish roots, while the short, focused sessions mark a clear shift towards instinct after the longer cycles that have marked earlier chapters of the catalogue.

Winter rooms from Wexford to Kerry

Alongside the album, the band have announced an autumn and winter Irish tour. It opens on 17 October 2026 at Wexford’s Spiegeltent. Dublin follows at Vicar Street on 27 and 28 November, then Cork’s Savoy on 4 and 5 December, the Nerve Centre in Derry on 11 December, Mandela Hall in Belfast on 12 December, and the Gleneagle Club in Kerry on 19 December.

Tickets went on sale on 11 September 2026. Pre-orders for limited edition vinyl, CD and bundles are available now through the band’s site and Spindizzy Records. The run keeps the band in familiar Irish rooms through the weeks either side of the album’s arrival, giving the new material its first extended stretch on stage before the year is out.

What stands now is straightforward: a ninth studio album finished at speed, a November release date on Claddagh, and a winter itinerary already on sale. The songs will have to carry the rest.