SJ McArdle: All My Dream Companions Gone (Uphill Struggle Records/RMG Digital) ★★★★☆Old Ghosts in the Water, SJ McArdle’s acclaimed 2022 album, was a song cycle about the history of Drogheda Port. The Co Louth songwriter’s follow-up album, the title of which comes from the poem After Court Martial, by Francis Ledwidge, who was killed in Flanders in 1917, is another song cycle, this time about the first World War. McArdle keeps the narrative focus localised – two of his great-grandfathers returned home from the unimaginable trauma – yet still broadly relatable, delivering a suite of compassionate, perceptive songs that are consummately performed by guests who include Lisa Lambe, Trevor Hutchinson, Róisín Ward Morrow and Nuala Kennedy. Loah: Materia Medica (Self-Released) ★★★☆☆Better late than never, we say, of the debut album from Loah, a stalwart of the music scene for more than a decade. The album’s title refers both to her work as a pharmacist and to the restorative nature of music, while its songs travel beyond that to touch on multiculturalism, Irishness, genre and gender. (Loah’s father grew up in Sierra Leone.) No small skill is applied throughout by numerous musicians (including Brian Dillon, Alannah Thornbourgh, Francesco Turrisi and the late Eoin French), but the mixture of contrasting sonic elements isn’t always successful. The flow is also disrupted by four devotional a-capella inserts, Isobel’s Lament I to IV, which lend atmosphere but not much else. Far more evocative are superb songs such as Intimacy, Reykjavik 8am, Windows, Our Tree and I Choose Love.Chuck Squires: The Late Great Chuck Squires (Self-Released) ★★★★☆Giving Irish country and western a completely new meaning and a different kind of legitimacy, Chuck Squires is the fictional name of a motley bunch of Irish musicians with a common love of 1970s Nashville music. With a relaxed approach indebted to the bewhiskered styles of Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings (and occasionally a smooth-skinned Gram Parsons), the musicians and songwriters David A Tapley, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Chris Barry and Ken Mooney play by the keep-it-real-keep-it-simple rule book. In other words, quality original songs performed without affectation or overthinking. And pedal steel guitar. Lots of pedal steel guitar.Roger Doyle: Idir (1185574 Records DK) ★★☆☆☆If any Irish musician has moved to their own rhythm, it’s Roger Doyle. His work in electronic and experimental music has ranged from the sublime (soundtracks for Steven Berkoff’s stage production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and Bob Quinn’s film Budawanny) to the seemingly impenetrable (the electronic opera Heresy). In between are albums such as Idir, which in equal measure invigorate (Faultline, Nighthood’s Unseen Violet) and fatigue (So Far, Elevation of Eyelids). As always, Doyle is unpredictable, for which we give genuine thanks, but repeated listens might not be a priority.Big Sun: 001 (Self-Released) ★★★★☆Big Sun is the pseudonym of Niall Kennedy, a guitarist in the Belfast band And So I Watch You from Afar. A solo debut album “built across years of stolen hours on laptops in vans, tour buses and questionable backstage sofas”, 001’s six electronic tracks pulse and ripple with a controlled, beats-driven energy that is impossible not to be affected by. The likes of Tell a Friend, Freedom and Data Tactics are the cat’s pyjamas, albeit ones ripped and scattered across the dance floor.