NewDad

Life is all about balance, and for every dream experience that shakes up your world, there’s often a sacrifice to be made. NewDad have had plenty of the former since releasing their debut single ‘How’ in 2020 and steadily building an ever-burgeoning fanbase around their spellbinding dream-pop. They’ve released a critically-acclaimed debut album in 2024’s ‘Madra’, gained a fan in their ultimate hero, The Cure’s Robert Smith, and toured parts of the world they never thought they’d get to visit. But for all that to be possible, the Galway three-piece have had to give up some things, too.

Around four years ago, the band – singer/guitarist Julie Dawson, guitarist Sean O’Dowd, drummer Fiachra Parslow – left their home behind and moved to London. It’s a relocation that’s helped them thrive as a group, but is also something that Dawson still has mixed feelings about. “Most days I wake up and I’m like,‘Yes, let’s fucking do this’, but I do still miss home,” she explains.

That tension between knowing you’re where you need to be right now and longing to be somewhere else colours ‘Altar’, NewDad’s highly anticipated second album. Started shortly before the release of ‘Madra’, it’s deeply informed by Dawson’s yearning for home, for family and the place that she truly belongs. In some ways, the record is a tribute to Galway, the singer in reverence of her hometown.

“The album itself is where I divulge my love for home,” Dawson shares, nodding to its title. “It’s the idea that Ireland is the altar and it’s the thing that I worship, in a way.” The meaning that imagined altar takes on has multiple layers to it, too. It’s a reference to the sacrifice the band has made in putting hundreds of miles between them and the people they cherish most– “Sacrifice is another thing that happens at altars; I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard that happens,” Dawson laughs. ‘Altar’ also taps into some of the themes in the lyrics of “appeasing people, and that’s what you do at altars – appease a higher power”.

“I think of where / I’d like to be / Anywhere but here / Is fine by me,” Dawson sings on the twinkling slow build of opening track,‘Other Side’. Across that song and the album in general, that burning for home – for the place Dawson feels most at ease and like her true self – grow darker and more anxiety-ridden, themes of survival and needing to be saved repeatedly piercing through. “Kneeling at the altar / Hope I get to heaven,” she sighs on ‘Mr Cold Embrace’, an acoustic-guitar-led, string-laden beauty that also finds the singer questioning “don’t know if I should have left her”.

‘Misery’, meanwhile, finds her interrogating her role in her unhappiness, acknowledging the sometimes self-inflicted nature of her gloom. “It’s all these cyclical things that we do and these patterns we fall in and out of,” she explains. “I was like,‘Can I go home? Do I need to be here? Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I putting myself in these situations where I’m becoming deeply unhappy?’” Dawson wanted to make the song sound “surreal and alarming”, inspired by the imagery in Dante’s Inferno. “It’s very whispery and freaky.”

Finale ‘Something Broken’, though, breaks the dwelling and yearning, Dawson asking to feel at home in her current location, to laugh harder, to forget what’s tormenting her. “It’s a more hopeful message in that it’s like,‘I’m here now, let’s make the best of something that can be really hard’,” she says.

‘Altar’– recorded in January 2025 between studios in Ipswich and London – isn’t simply an album about where one comes from and wants to get back to, though. It also charts Dawson’s journey as a musician, coming to terms with the realities of her hobby and passion becoming a profession, and navigating the industry as a woman. “When you start doing music, you do it because you love playing music, you love making music,” she reasons. “I hadn’t really considered the other aspects – touring is so fun, but it’s intensive. It’s difficult. Doing social media, I hate it. Just a lot of inside pressures and politics – it’s a lot more pressure than I thought it would be.”

Music, though, is still the outlet Dawson uses to alleviate the stresses in her life – even when they come from music itself. You can tell how impactful songwriting is for her just by looking at her catalogue of work so far – and the prolific levels at which she writes. ‘Altar’ was written before NewDad’s debut album had even been released, and between that record and this, she found the time to release her first solo album,‘Bottom Of The Pool’, too.

Across all of her writing, but particularly on ‘Altar’, her artistry has helped her to find more understanding of both who she is as a person and her relationship with being a musician. “These songs have definitely helped me understand that and become a stronger person,” she nods. “I can be bad at standing up for myself. But you really need to do that in music, otherwise people will take the piss. I definitely realised that through songwriting.”

That side of ‘Altar’ finds the singer grappling with her people-pleasing tendencies on ‘Entertainer’ and tackling the expectations put on female musicians on ‘Heavyweight’. ‘Roobosh’, a tightly-wound song that’s driven by a propulsive, rumbling bassline andDawson’s sudden yells, plunges us into the confusing quagmire of being a woman in society,pulled deeper and deeper down by the expectation to be “so patient and understanding and nice all the time”. “That is placed on us, but I also definitely play into that,” Dawson explains. “I’m a people pleaser, and I’m trying not to be, but I want to make people happy. I just wanted to have one song where I just went, ‘Fuck you, fuck this’. I wanted to just have a whinge and one song where I just fucking went for it. I wanted it to be slap bang in the middle of the record, just completely off-kilter, like, ‘What the fuck?’” For NeFittingly, given the love for home on ‘Altar’, the continued ascent of the three-piece on this record will also continue to further Ireland’s current standing as a hotbed of world-beating creative talent. NewDad are bringing something fresh to the new wave of original, formidable young acts from the country, distinctive from their peers as they join them in making waves around the world.

Whether live or on record and regardless of where listeners are tuning in from, Dawson hopes ‘Altar’ helps people gain the courage to stand up for themselves and be proud of themselves, and gain the strength that this confident new album has given her. “Nothing’s perfect,” she reflects, “but if you just work hard and are true to yourself, it’ll be alright.”

Sacrifices might still have to be made in the balancing act of life, but ‘Altar’ at least has helped Dawson accept that and is about to take NewDad to even greater heights. Dad’s second album, the band enlisted rising producer Shrink – aka Sam Breathwick – to work with them in the studio, as well as reuniting with writer Justin Parker. The relationship with Shrink began in writing sessions, coming up with ‘Entertainer’ and ‘Safe’, the title track from the band’s 2025 EP, together. “These songs that we spent two days writing and he produced sounded perfect, so I was like, ‘I want to see what else we can do’”.

The results are a record that’s as beautiful as it is crunchy and in-your-face, deftly skipping between sparkling, gentle moments and heavy blasts of guitar and bass whenever the songs demand. It’s more pop-leaning in its scope, drawing from Dawson’s appreciation of thecurrent pop landscape and “cool rock bands with a lot of brightness to them” like R.E.M. and The Sundays. The expansion of the NewDad sound will be reflected in the band’s new live show – an already acclaimed setup that’s gained them slots at every major UK festival, landed them support slots for Pixies, Fontaines DC and The War On Drugs, and taken them as far afield as Japan and China. “I think our biggest headline show was in Shanghai, and the wholecrowd were singing ‘White Ribbons’” Dawson recalls.

“I burst into tears. That’s the only time that’s ever happened to me, but I was like, ‘How is this real?’” The next phase of NewDad touring – which sees them return to China, Japan, North America, Europe and the UK over the rest of 2025 – will see Shrink join their on-stage line-up too. His addition will, Dawson says, make the songs sound “much more full”: “It’s a big step up. The songs that we have struggled with before – getting them across live – we have that now because we have another person.”

Fittingly, given the love for home on ‘Altar’, the continued ascent of the three-piece on this record will also continue to further Ireland’s current standing as a hotbed of world-beating creative talent. NewDad are bringing something fresh to the new wave of original, formidable young acts from the country, distinctive from their peers as they join them in making waves around the world. Whether live or on record and regardless of where listeners are tuning in from, Dawson hopes ‘Altar’ helps people gain the courage to stand up for themselves and be proud of themselves, and gain the strength that this confident new album has given her.

“Nothing’s perfect,” she reflects, “but if you just work hard and are true to yourself, it’ll be alright.” Sacrifices might still have to be made in the balancing act of life, but ‘Altar’ at least has helped Dawson accept that and is about to take NewDad to even greater heights.