Amble

Pub sessions and handed-in notice

Amble began in Dublin in 2022, when Robbie Cunningham and Oisín McCaffrey started playing traditional songs in pubs with no greater ambition than the drinks that came with it. Ross McNerney, who plays mandolin, banjo and bouzouki, was recruited over social media. The first gig as a trio was a support slot in front of around 90 people, and it ended in a standing ovation.

The day jobs took a while to shake. Cunningham taught primary school in Terenure, McNerney taught secondary school in Longford, and McCaffrey worked as a data scientist at Pfizer. All three had resigned by 2024, once a deal with Warner Records was signed. When Cunningham told his father he was leaving teaching, the reply was "throw the trout out to catch the salmon" — a line the band later printed on merchandise.

All three grew up in households where traditional music was ordinary rather than a project, and that shows in the construction of the songs: acoustic guitars, close three-part harmony, very little studio sleight of hand. McNerney has described the approach without ornament — "We are just being who we are and telling our stories."

Reverie, and the album that would not leave the chart

The debut album Reverie arrived in May 2025 on Warner Records. It went to No 1 in Ireland and reached No 48 in the UK, and it finished the year as Spotify's most-streamed album of the year in Ireland. By late September 2026 it had spent over a year inside the top three of the Irish albums chart, which is an unusually long tail for a first record by a band barely three years old.

The songs that did the work are small and specific rather than anthemic: "Schoolyard Days", "Mariner Boy", "Hand Me Downs", "Marlay Park", "Mary's Pub", "Lonely Island". The subject matter is rural childhood, leaving, and the distance between the two.

The touring that carried the record was mostly other people's. Amble opened for Hozier on his 2025 Unreal Unearth dates in Boston, Casper, Billings and Toronto, and closed 2025 with sold-out nights of their own at Dublin's 3Arena.

2026: two awards and a No 1

On 5 March 2026 the band won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Song of the Year with "Schoolyard Days", along with Breakthrough Artist; they were nominated in four categories in total. Cunningham's response was level — "You don't write the songs for awards, but when you do get nominated, it is a lovely moment" — while McNerney noted he had sat in the same room as an audience member in 2016, which made performing there ten years later "surreal".

Three singles followed through 2026: "Moral Victory", the sparer ballad "The Rarest Hour", and "The Swell" in June. On 11 September 2026 "The Swell" reached No 1 on the Official Irish Singles Chart, ending an eleven-week run at the top by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean's "Rein Me In". It was certified platinum at 15,000 combined sales and streams, and held the top spot for a second consecutive week.

The festival year was large. They played Bonnaroo in Tennessee, then Electric Picnic on 30 August 2026, where the crowd sat on shoulders and waved GAA club flags. "This is what every kid in the country who picks up a guitar dreams of," Cunningham told them. Away from their own dates, they supported Dermot Kennedy across Europe and joined the North American leg of Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour.

Love and All Its Wares

The second album, Love and All Its Wares, was announced in mid-August 2026 for release on 29 January 2027. It was recorded in a single three-week session at Grouse Lodge in Westmeath in April 2026 and produced by Philip Weinrobe, whose previous credits include Adrianne Lenker and Theo Katzman.

Twelve tracks, including "The Swell" and "Last Rites". The stated shift is away from the dream-like simplicity of Reverie towards a bigger sound and a wider emotional range, with the exhaustion of permanent touring sitting alongside the love songs. Of "Last Rites", the band said it was about "finding your true self in the chaos of life" — "when the internal voice in your head and the external voices around you are pulling in different directions, retaining a true version of yourself becomes increasingly difficult."

The size of the rooms now

The autumn 2026 UK run was the band's biggest headline tour of Britain to date: Sheffield's Octagon on 28 September, O2 Academy Glasgow on 30 September, NX Newcastle on 2 October, O2 Apollo Manchester on 3 October, Rock City Nottingham on 5 October, Cardiff University Great Hall on 6 October, finishing at O2 Academy Brixton on 8 October. A 19-date North American tour begins on 22 October 2026, with nine of those dates already sold out by mid-September.

The year ends at home and deliberately small: three nights at the TF Royal in Castlebar on 17, 18 and 19 December, tickets on sale from 30 September. "It feels right to finish the year at home," the band said.

Next summer is the step up. Belsonic at Ormeau Park, Belfast on 23 June 2027, Malahide Castle in Dublin on 24 June, Thomond Park Stadium in Limerick on 3 July, Castlefield Bowl in Manchester on 8 July and Alexandra Palace Park in London on 9 July. Tickets went on general sale on 21 August 2026; Malahide Castle and Thomond Park were sold out within weeks.

What the set actually does

The 2026 shows have settled into a roughly fifteen-song main set that almost always opens with "Schoolyard Days" and closes with "Tonnta". An encore is not guaranteed — of the 22 documented full setlists from 2026, twelve ended without one, and where there is one it tends to be "Mariner Boy" or "Lonely Island".

Reviewing the Reverie tour date at Hollywood Avondale in Auckland on 22 February 2026, John Hastings noted that the staging had moved on from the bare early shows towards layered instrumentation, better lighting and more deliberate audience handling, while arguing the band "aren't performing at their audience rather performing with them". At Electric Picnic the core trio was augmented by strings, brass, percussion and keys, and the set made room for a Tyler Childers cover alongside "The Swell" and "Socrates Smiled". Reviewer Zöe Percival's observation was that the crowd knew every word.