[Ultra Music; 2026]
Irish songwriter Rosie Carney has always been forging a path forward. Her beginnings of hushed, vulnerable folk introduced us to an artist slowly coming into the light and into herself. There was always a yearning for something else, something a little bit more; while she could dazzle with little instrumentation, Carney’s recorded output has always seemed to ask for an almost intangible extra quality. Her 2020 take on Radiohead’s The Bends felt like a turning point, with Carney showing us both that in the confines of lockdown she would move outwith any expected classification and that she was reaching for something more.
On her follow up, 2022’s i wanna feel happy, felt like the screen was becoming wider. Textured, fizzy electric guitar and pulsating synths started dressing her tracks, building on top of the acoustic cores. On her new album, Doomsday… Don’t Leave Me Here, the upwards trajectory to a “bigger” sound continues. Co-written and co-produced with Ross MacDonald of The 1975 and producer Ed Thomas, Carney feels like she’s readying herself for bigger stages, more spotlights, and more sonic options to explore.
In terms of texture, Doomsday is arguably her most consistent record to date. MacDonald and Thomas work a sort of magic in recasting Carney here: the soft pastel colours and the cloudy feel make for a pillowy backdrop, even though the music aims upwards. When “Here” cracks into gear during its chorus, the aim narrows as it opens up. Similarly, opening track “Everything Is Wrong” casts what feels like beams of pure sunlight as shimmering guitar chords clear away clouds. When the music draws itself inwards, the delicate, fleecy weave is still there: before “Sixteen” bursts into full technicolour, it floats by on knocking, wooden percussion and dainty piano figures while closing track “Tethered” is anything but the title, a loose combination of acoustic guitar and piano awash with a cloud-like haze.
What carries the album through is Carney. Despite the grander sound, she retains her identity throughout, her ached voice piercing through even the loudest drum machines. Her qualities remain the same as before: she has a way of making words feel like individual weights, each sentiment a memory that’s been troubling her for years. “It’s all the time, just on my mind,” she sings with a blank stare over rubbery synths and chittering drums on album highlight “The Evidence”. On aforementioned “Sixteen” you can practically hear the anxiety bubbling up as she aches “When they stop and look at me / I could turn into concrete.” Channelling a “severe existential dread”, Carney wrestles with what feels like ghostly figures across the album, faceless entities that haunt her on the brightest day as much as they do on the darkest night.
The downside to all of this is that at times Doomsday can bleed from one track to the other. There are moments – especially around the middle of the album – where the bridges of each song seem ready to veer into the same territory. It’s a pleasant pastel wash it becomes, but there are moments where the album could perhaps benefit from some more oomph or a more daring sonic turn. Still, Doomsday is still a good – and often great – exercise in Carney exploring new pastures, working in an upwards trajectory towards attaining that something more you can tell she’s itching for. The shoegaze-leaning, vaporwave-nodding alternative pop suits her pretty well. The end of the world has rarely sounded so lovely.
