Five Irish albums put craft on the September shelf

Five Irish albums have been circulating this September: Driven Snow, David Geraghty, Andy Irvine, Last Apollo and Sorcha Richardson. Between a second full?length, a solo turn from a Bell X1 mainstay, a Woody Guthrie songbook, a self?released debut and a Faction return, the month has put a fair stretch of Irish craft on the shelves. Driven Snow’s Mother of Christ is the band’s second album, released on Driven Snow Music. It opens with a track that features Kieran McGuinness and Emily Aylmer singing “Everybody knows that I dragged you down.” The record was one of the mid?month titles, dated 11 September. David Geraghty’s Komorebi appears on Bohemia Records. The title is taken from the Japanese word for sunlight seen through leaves. Geraghty has spent his career inside Bell X1, the Celbridge band he formed with Paul Noonan and Dominic Phillips. That group's studio run began with Neither Am I in 2000 and Music In Mouth in 2003, was followed by Flock in 2005, Blue Lights on the Runway in 2009 and Bloodless Coup in 2011, and reached Merciful Hour in 2023, flanked that year by the singles Haint Blue, Spacewalk and The Lobster. In 2026 the band issued the single But First, Love. Komorebi sits outside that sequence as a solo statement, drawing its light?and?leaf image into a separate frame. Bell X1 grew out of the earlier group Juniper. After Damien Rice left Juniper in 1998, the remaining members continued as Bell X1. Geraghty’s solo album therefore arrives amid a long shared history rather than out of nowhere: decades of records, live sets including Tour De Flock and Field Recordings, and the more recent Haint Blue?era material. Andy Irvine’s Devoted (Songs of Woody Guthrie), on The Last Music Co, turns on his discovery of Woody Guthrie’s songs. The set places Irish traditional craft against the American songbook he has been exploring. Last Apollo is the project of Lucy Rice. Her debut album, I’ll Walk Towards You, is self?released. Sessions began in London and continued in Dublin. The record was listed for 4 September, among the earlier titles of the month. Sorcha Richardson’s Draw the Outline came out on Faction on 11 September, sharing that mid?month window with Mother of Christ. A separate September guide also logged girlfriend.’s Carousel, released on 4 September, alongside Last Apollo, Draw the Outline and Mother of Christ, confirming the same release window for the titles now under review.

Geraghty’s light through the leaves Komorebi is not a Bell X1 record by another name. It is filed under Geraghty’s own name on Bohemia Records, and the Japanese title signals a deliberate shift of register — attention to a natural image rather than the band’s established rock frame. Listeners who have followed Bell X1 from the early 2000s albums through Merciful Hour will hear a player stepping aside from the three?piece rather than extending it. The 2026 single But First, Love keeps the band’s own line open in the same year; the solo album does not close it. That long arc matters because Geraghty’s public voice has almost always been heard inside the group. From Neither Am I to Merciful Hour, the records carry a shared signature. A solo title on Bohemia Records does not rewrite that catalogue; it simply stands beside it, with a different name on the spine and a different image in the title.

What the September shelf holds Taken together, the five records do not form a single scene. Mother of Christ is a second album on the band’s own imprint. I’ll Walk Towards You is a debut finished between two cities. Devoted is a songbook project rooted in discovery. Draw the Outline continues Richardson’s work on Faction. Komorebi is the outlier in personnel if not in calendar: a known voice from Celbridge working without Noonan and Phillips for the length of an album. Release dates cluster at the start and middle of the month — 4 September for Last Apollo and for girlfriend.’s Carousel, 11 September for Driven Snow and Sorcha Richardson — with Geraghty’s and Irvine’s titles belonging to the same September stretch covered in the reviews. Labels range from Driven Snow Music and Bohemia Records to The Last Music Co, Faction and self?release. That spread is ordinary for Irish independent work, and it is exactly what is on the shelf this month. Nothing further has been announced beyond the records themselves. The reviews fix the titles, the labels and the opening detail on Mother of Christ; the rest is the listening.