We have run this album from top to tail more times than we are comfortable admitting. And we don't mean as background. We mean sitting down with it, on purpose, every time. That alone says something. Obsessed? Us? Yeah… yeah we are.

Dermot Kennedy's third album arrived April 3rd, 2026, on Interscope and Island Records, produced by Gabe Simon, the same person behind Noah Kahan's Stick Season and Lana Del Rey's most recent work (so you already know it is going to play with your heartstrings). That combination tells you exactly what you're walking into before you press play. Folk-adjacent, emotionally precise production that knows when to get out of the way.

BTW: on REFUGE: Gabe Simon - background vocalist, mandolin, acoustic guitar, bass, percussion, accordion, baritone guitar.

What makes THE WEIGHT OF THE WOODS different to Sonder and Without Fear is that it was built in Ireland. Not recorded at a distance from it, not inspired by it from a New York studio. Actually made there, in the soil of it. Kennedy and Simon spent the first week driving around the country collecting instruments from Galway and Cork.

They brought in Cormac Begley on traditional instruments. Muireann Ní Shé plays uilleann pipes. A bodhrán replaces a proper drum on some tracks. When a storm knocked the power out at a nearby church, a choir performed in the dark while snow fell outside. That sequence is the album's opening track. You can hear the room. It is worth looking at the video below to see it live from Glenmaroon.

THE WEIGHT OF THE WOODS (REPRISE) opens the record with that choir and a shiver. It is just over 1 minute. On first listen, maybe the mood wasn’t right; it wasn’t going to be one to fall in love with. After a few spins, it does what it aims to do. It sets the tone so well.

HONEST arrives immediately after and does not let you breathe. The list from the end of the intro into the strumming is excellent. The pace changes, sure, but the mood is already set. Dermot’s voice always has a rawness, and we’re glad to see that, in every release, it’s not stripped away by production. Speaking of production…

REFUGE is where the production starts to show off, layered, patient, building to something that earns every second of its length. Our fave - no. That’s not to say it’s not good, the build at 2.18 is brilliant, and breaks open about 2.35 into the most stunning repetition. Each run builds. Adore. Pay off at 3.13.

FUNERAL is the one. The title is doing work, the song does more. Kennedy's voice here sits somewhere between grief and relief and refuses to resolve the difference, which is exactly right. Lines that do so much work in so few words are Gried is such a solid promise onwards. Solace stood you up again is whip smart.

The somber moods sweep in pretty quickly with ENDLESS. The internet felt this one, with many people sobbing their way through it. It’s heavy, for sure, and can catch you off guard.

SYCAMORE and OFTEN, LATELY are the middle stretch that most albums get slightly wrong. These do not. They keep the record's temperature without letting it dip. TURNSTILE is where things open up again, more production, more scope, the sound of the record remembering it can be enormous when it wants to be. We’d consider SYCAMORE to be a grower, and OFTEN, LATELY feels a lot like his earlier work.

When the album was first released, TURNSTILE was the one for us. It doesn’t sound like the rest of the album, and some people say it doesn’t even sound like him. But we think live this will be one of the best of the set.

WASTED. This and TURNSTILE bring a lightness to the album, the chords are brighter, it feels more poppy, it’s catchy AF.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Dermot keeps us in the space for rumination and reflection with BLUE EYES. It’s pared back in comparison to the rest of the tracks; he does show a vocal softening here that deserves a couple of runs. And it’s hard not to get hooked on the “I’m haunting you” lines. He breaks out of the Bon Iver style softness before you hit the two-minute mark, and hits with what we know and love.

TREPIDATION can take it or leave it.

THE ONLY TIME I PRAYED, if you like Bon Iver, you’ll like this. Exceptional songwriting, we checked the credits to see if Vernon was on there. HAPPINESS, despite the title, doesn’t feel all that happy. There are countless interpretations online, but the final one on one of the Reddit forums was this:

Ending with WEIGHT OF THE WOODS brings the album into a loop. Each song feeds another; it all pulls along the same thread. Home - wherever that is. In 2022, he went to New York for a while to work on his songs, but ‘something’ about how many times home, as people, feelings, or literally places are where he always goes back to.

We have listened to this from start to finish more times than we can count. We will listen to it again tonight.