The Ivors 2024 are set to take place at London's Grosvenor House this evening, May 23 – with Irish acts Lankum's False Lankum and CMAT's Crazymad, For Me both up for the prestigious Best Album honour.

Reacting to news of her nomination last month, CMAT remarked: "Anyone who has ever met me past the age of 15 will know that it has always been my dream to win an Ivor Novello award. To be nominated for best ALBUM amongst a group of artists whose music I have worshipped is truly the biggest honour of my career so far. Thank you so much..."

The Best Album category also includes Raye's My 21st Century Blues, Sampha's Lahai, and Yussef Dayes' Black Classical Music.

Dublin star Jazzy, meanwhile, is nominated in the Most Performed Work category, for her hit single 'Giving Me'. The track, produced and written with fellow Dubliners Belters Only, made Jazzy the first Irish female artist to go No.1 on the Irish Singles Chart in 14 years. 'Giving Me' also reached the Top 3 in the UK.

The ceremony, hosted by Lauren Laverne, will also see Bruce Springsteen become the first ever international songwriter to be inducted as a Fellow of the Ivor Academy. Last week, it was announced that KT Tunstall will receive an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection, recognising her remarkable 20-year career in music.

While the award ceremony itself will not be broadcast, a behind-the-scenes livestream will be available to watch on the Amazon Music channel on Twitch from 4pm today.

To celebrate, we're revisiting our original album reviews of CMAT's Crazymad, For Me and Lankum's False Lankum...

Album Review: CMAT - Crazymad, For Me

CMAT’s debut If My Wife New, I’d Be Dead sparked a rocket-like trajectory for this most mind-blowing of artists. As well as hitting No.1 on the Irish charts, the record was a Choice Music Prize winner, which also earned the singer a Spotify billboard in Times Square.

For good measure, CMAT did a solo acoustic number, post-Elton, on the Beeb’s Glasto coverage, while the crowning glory is an upcoming three-date stint at Dublin’s Olympia. What happens next? Listening to her sophomore album Crazymad, For Me, the best prediction is to set the controls for the heart of the sun, because this is a goddamn boss record.

Think big. Think Lana Del Rey big. The concept album finds a 47-year-old alternate CMAT constructing a time machine from a dodgy YouTube video to go back and save herself from a toxic relationship. The time travel contraption is wonky, jettisoning our hero in a time desert, eventually crashlanding in 1890s Paris. That big enough an idea for you?!

That epic narrative is soundtracked with – deep breath – indie; 20th century country; Kate Bush sonics; Celine Dion vocals; Gram Parsons’ Cosmic Music; the psychedelic soft-rock of Todd Rungren; and Meatloaf’s epic theatricality. I’m not making this up – the latter quartet of odd bedfellows are all contained in just one track alone, closer ‘Have Fun!’

‘Such A Miranda’, partly set in Copenhagen, maps the toxicity – comparison to exes, body shaming, gas-lighting – before the Queen of Denmark himself, the incomparable John Grant, wades in with a clarion call on the wonderfully titled ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight’.

However, the best titled track on the record, indeed on any record ever made, must be ‘I… Hate Who I Am When I’m Horny’. Elsewhere, the closing vocal on ‘Rent’ raises the hackles on wherever you’re supposed to have them. ‘Whatever’s Inconvenient’, meanwhile, is one of the best allusions (and there have been a fair few) to The Fall’s Mark E. Smith.

And beyond that, CMAT matches the Salford über-miserabilist in put-down couplets, exhibit A being the entirety of album opener ‘California’. Essential listening.

– Will Russell

Album Review: Lankum - False Lankum

In Lankum’s experimental, unconventional, and sometimes slightly unhinged hands, concepts of tradition and history have always been malleable – with ancient ways simultaneously respected and uprooted, to create music that comes from an inherently contemporary place.

As such, attempts to compartmentalise the group under an ‘Irish folk revival’ tag has always felt a bit off, given the expansive pool of influences at play, and 2019’s Choice Music Prize-winning The Livelong Day played a significant role in helping them transcend such conversations, largely thanks to the contribution of their engineer and producer John “Spud” Murphy. But if that album was a doubling down on the formidable drones and heavily textured atmospheres, their new LP, False Lankum, pushes their sound even further into the abyss.

Often as urgent as air-raid sirens, and at other times taking the form of an immersive, transcendent trip, False Lankum is a sprawling cinematic journey that – despite running an epic one hour and ten minutes  – is navigated with masterful control and flow.

The group have always been deeply informed by international sounds, and here they’re facing that world with more conviction than ever – particularly in the first section of the album, as they channel the spirits of long-gone American mountain communities and sea-folk alike, before taking them through a centuries-spanning time-warp.

‘Master Crowley’s’, meanwhile, is a classic example of the group’s ability to take a well-known tune and build an increasingly dark, demented world around it, with layers of instrumentation that swing from virtuosic performances to the slamming of makeshift objects. If anything, they’ve become more confident in their wildly textured soundscapes, and unafraid to push at the boundaries of time, space or their listeners’ comfort.

But they can still straddle that line between the gloriously deranged and the blindingly beautiful – with Radie Peat’s vocals on ‘Newcastle’, inspired by Dublin act The Deadlians’ version, offering a captivating respite from the white-knuckle intensity.

The playful rough-and-readiness of Lankum’s approach on previous releases has been gradually replaced by a notably more polished chaos on False Lankum, but they haven’t lost the brazenness that’s always marked Lankum as a special force, and that madcap magic continues to guide their boldest creative directions.

Named after the ballad from which they took their name, False Lankum being presented as a quasi self-titled project, four albums in, feels apt – serving as both a groundbreaking reintroduction for steadfast fans, and a crucial launching pad for new audiences. It should see them take a major step forward on the international stage, with some of the most fearlessly forward-thinking music that’s been produced on these shores in decades.

– Lucy O'Toole

The winner of the Ivor Novello award for Best Album will be revealed this evening, May 23.