Revisiting Fleet Foxes' sparkling landmark folk debut album with Aoife Barry

Mags Mullaney is the Instagram and Tik Tok music influencer known as Totally Frogaret or now called The Frog Report. Mags joins us this week to talk about her All Together Now experience and Niall talks about the problematic side of Glen Hansard before we dive into music we are loving at the moment. Music discussed and chosen on the episode from Kelela, Nirosta Steel, Chanel Beads, Goldbug, Jack White, Mary In The Junkyard, Shy One, Swapmeet and new tracks from Mike D and Trá Pháidín. Plus, we talk about what we're reading, watching and more. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

Fees, touts and a monopoly: the state of Irish gig ticketing in 2026.

Today’s podcast guest For Those I Love has just been announced for The Circle by Jameson Music stage at this weekend’s All Together Now Festival. While I’ve written extensively about Dave Balfe’s For Those I Love project, right up to last year’s second album Carving The Stone,  it’s been seven years since we chatted on the podcast. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink   You may remember the original 2019 podcast -  which was the first time that Dave talked deeply and intensely about the loss of his friend Paul Curran, a catalyst for making a devastatingly emotional album about love, loss, grief and friendship. On his return to the podcast this time around, the topics are a less weighty but no less interesting - a year after album two - Balfe can't stop building props, remixing his own work and creating films for the upcoming live shows at All Together Now, and he reveals he has been working on two distinct ATN live sets, and they couldn't be more different from each other. The Friday show at Some Kind Of Wonderful leans on the props Balfe has spent the last few weeks building himself, including a giant grass mound housing a surprise constructed by hand in his back garden. The Saturday show at The Circle by Jameson Music stage is something else entirely: a full club reworking of Carving the Stone, 60 minutes of fresh material remixing the album into a dancefloor club set, that allowed Balfe to acknowledge another strand of his musical talent.  In between we talk about the evolution of his live visuals, and the importance of nostalgia and album listening in a digital age. The Circle by Jameson Music has consistently offered one of the most varied lineups at the festival in a secluded setting in the trees on the grounds of Curraghmore and its fifth year is no different. Along with FTIL, you can catch sets from last week’s podcast guest SOAK, the rapper Mike, Miss Dynamite, One Leg One Eye, Delivery Service, Pebbledash, Rory Sweeney (live), Jamz Supernova, Or:la, Mango, Ahmed With Love and the Mabfield Live Podcast among others. * Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord community   

On this week’s episode my guest is SOAK. Bridie Monds-Watson has been making music since they were a teenager in Derry, releasing their Mercury-nominated debut Before We Forgot How to Dream in 2015 at just 18, followed by Grim Town in 2019 and If I Never Know You Like This Again in 2022, all on Rough Trade.

A live recording of a discussion about one of the best albums of 2025 from Rosalía. Rosalía’s Lux is the kind of album that demands to be heard properly and intently – a mountain-moving, orchestral operatic masterwork recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, sung in 13 different languages, and inspired from the writings of Simone Weil, Clarice Lispector and the lives of female saints, so that's what we did in March when we hosted two listening parties in Dublin's The Big Romance and Fidelity, as part of the Nialler9 Listen Closely album listening events. After the flamenco pop of El Mal Querer and the genre-slicing Motomami, on Lux, Rosalía made something else entirely – intimate and enormous, ancient and futuristic, deeply human in every sense. The album is so ambitious and creative – it felt right to dedicate some real time to the record in a suitable environment without distractions. So this podcast episode is a recording from night two in The Big Romance between myself Niall and guest Louise Bruton - who recently directed the short film Let Go - discussing the massive scope of Rosalía's Lux - the literary writing and saint-inspired spiritually romantic and rapturous album - which was my favourite of 2025. Lux realises an album of earth-shaking movements in four parts through orchestral spirituals, with The London Symphony Orchestra. Listen back to the chat in this episode. Our next Listening Party is Chemical Brothers – Dig Your Own Hole [1997] on July 29th.