Music City announces debut album + shares single ft Sheer Mag's Tina Halladay
Music City
Announces debut album, Welcome To Music City
Due 6th February 2026 via Redundant Span Records
Listen to lead single "Common Sense"
ft. Sheer Mag's Tina Halladay
UK/Ireland Tour in February
Ireland’s rock legacy runs deep, from Thin Lizzy to The Undertones. Today it’s Euro-country queen CMAT, rap rebels Kneecap, and post-punk runners Fontaines D.C. — and now Dublin born-London based Music City, adding another bold chapter to the story with their hook-driven, punk-fired debut Welcome to Music City, due 6th February 2026 on Redundant Span Records.
The album blends wry storytelling with chiming guitars, stacked harmonies, and muscular rhythm sections. “I didn’t set out with a theme or story arc, but looking back the album feels like a constant fight between hope and disappointment,” shares songwriter Conor Lumsden (also drummer, singer and songwriter in Dublin favourites The Number Ones). “It’s the peaks and troughs of just trying to get by, in love, against the outside forces, or the ones inside your own head.”
New single “Common Sense” is a swaggering, hook-laden anthem featuring Tina Halladay of Sheer Mag, delivered with the passion of a 12-year-old playing guitar in the mirror. Music City have toured with Sheer Mag and Parquet Courts, and recently returned from Spain and Italy supporting The Lemon Twigs. Put those names together and you’ll start to hear where Music City are coming from...
Music City - "Common Sense" (ft Tina Halladay)
Listen: https://musiccity.ffm.to/commonsense
Welcome To Music City Album Preorder:
https://musiccity.ffm.to/welcometomusiccity
February Tour Dates:
Thursday 5th February - The Social, London
Friday 6th February - Delicious Clam, Sheffield
Saturday 7th February - The Rat & The Pigeon, Manchester
Sunday 8th February - Zerox, Newcastle
Saturday 14th February - Where Else, Margate
Thursday 26th February - The Grand Social, Dublin
Conor Lumsden says of "Common Sense": “It’s a song about having none. For that main riff, I wanted to capture the spirit of being twelve years old, getting your first guitar, and rocking out in your bedroom mirror. No filter, no music career plan, just the pure joy of hitting an electric guitar really fucking hard.”
Welcome to Music City follows a sold-out single, the cult favourite “Pretty Feelings” (via Static Shock Records a couple of years ago), which quickly became a wedding-floor staple of punks the world round. Conor's music has had spins on BBC 6 Music with Iggy Pop and Cillian Murphy, as well as support from WFMU in the U.S.
More about Welcome To Music City...
“Musically I wanted to connect my favourite dots between the 1950s and now, within the great expanse of rock’n’roll,” Conor Lumsden explains. “There are echoes of Buddy Holly and The Beatles, then into T. Rex, Elton John, Big Star, Todd Rundgren, Carole King, Steely Dan, Judee Sill, The Clash, Tom Petty... This music is sacred to me. I obsess over it in every way. At its best, rock’n’roll isn’t an intellectual pursuit at all, just pure excitement and magic.”
Welcome To Music City is one big collaboration, with a number of guest appearances. “My other band The Number Ones is very much a band, four fellas from Ireland with a sound that only happens when we open multipacks of Guinness in a room together,” Conor says. “Music City is different. It is an ever changing constellation of musical relationships built over years and miles of playing music. Kind of like The Muppets of rock music.”
Music City started when Conor joined up with musician friends Evan and Pete (formerly of The Strypes). “Their band had just called it a day and I thought they were incredible musicians. Evan played drums across the record and I owe so much of its feel and groove to him. The mark of a great drummer is not in flashy fills, it is in how they make a simple beat live and breathe. Evan has both.”
The other musicians lending their skills to these 11 tracks read like an autobiographical list of Conor’s musical life. There are appearances from the friends Conor grew up with in Ireland, and newer friends he’s met on the road and through various punk and DIY scenes over the years. And then with Tina Halladay: “Tina and I have been friends since 2014. We were part of an international coup to legalise melody in the punk scene. I think it worked,” he laughs.
“Tina and I bonded over Roger Miller, and “Common Sense” had a yee-haw silliness that was perfect for her. Her vocals completely changed the song, and her scream at the start is a high point of the album for me. Hart from Sheer Mag also plays bass on “It’s Alright” and absolutely killed it.” Other collaborators also came from further afield: Jay Arner added to “Common Sense” and Alastair MacKay from Dick Diver plays guitar on “A Matter of Time”.
“Closer to home, I had people I grew up with: Leigh Arthur sings on “Pretty Feelings”. Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh sings and plays viola, and her brother Fiachra, who I played my very first gig with when I was 12, does male backing vocals and all the piano and keyboards. Paula Cullen and Ceeva Derwin, the original singers in the Music City live band, are throughout the record too.”
When it comes to songwriting, everything is informed by life experiences. “Even if the names and details change, I only sing about what I know. There’s a line in “It’s Alright” where I hail a taxi and tell the driver to drive off the pier, and he replies, “with my luck I’d miss the sea.” That’s a real Dublin taxi man. You can’t usually quote what they say to you.”
“A Little Favour” came from a time Conor spent doing extras work, based on an older man, desperately trying to stand out in every scene, convinced a single line would be his big break. “That stuck with me, and I wrote the song from his perspective, complete with harpsichords and strings to match his dreams of grandeur. In the end, me and that extra aren’t that different at all.”
“You Remember” was written after “seeing so many people in Dublin stuck in relationships way past their expiry date, staying together because the rent’s too expensive to split” and “A Matter of Time” is about having to keep secrets against your will and pretending friendship with someone who’s done something very bad.
Every song starts life with a flash of a melodic idea, with Conor describing it as “like hearing the best song I’ve ever heard from a speeding car. I run after it, sweating, trying to catch more as it careens down the road. Then I go back to my guitar or piano and imagine how the rest of that gem might go. I try to tell everyday stories in the plainest, truest language I can and try and make it scan to keep the ghosts of Tin Pan Alley off my back”.
“Welcome To Music City” came together over quite a long stretch - largely in Dublin at Sonic Studios with Daniel Fox on the desk, and in London, plus some stints writing and recording in New York. “Once the basics were down, we layered vocals and other instrumentation, the stuff you don’t usually get to do when it’s just four rockers in a room. Orchestral timpani? Sure. Viola? Why not? The hardest part for me is always the vocals. Singing never came naturally. I wasn’t even allowed in the school choir, so every take is hard won.”
In London, the additional tracking was done at Ray Davies' studio’s Konk with Matt Jaggar, and finally the album was finished by Sam and Rachel in London on the recommendation of local pals The Tubs.
The album will be released on vinyl and digital formats, with photography by Tim O’Connell, celebrated for documenting Irish communities and artists like Kneecap.
Tracklist:
1. It’s Alright
2. When That Day Comes By
3. Do I?
4. A Little Favour
5. Pretty Feelings
6. A Matter Of Time
7. Common Sense
8. The Conversation
9. You Remember
10. Photograph
11. Autumn Song
12. Something’s On Your Mind
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