We’ve spun a lot of records over the past year, and plenty of them sound like they were cooked up in some sterile producer’s lab with charts telling artists what notes to hit—and that’s totally fine. But then there’s this album. Eoin Shannon‘s “Highs & lows“ hits different because it lives different.
This Irish singer-songwriter isn’t playing. Released August 2025, this 13-track journey grabs you from “Going Through Hell” and doesn’t let go until the dance remix fades out nearly 46 minutes later. And yeah, we said dance remix—we’ll get to that.
Tom Savage produced and created music for 10 tracks here, and you can feel his fingerprints all over the arrangements—guitar work that breathes, drums that hit when they need to, space that lets Shannon’s voice do the heavy lifting. Larry Magee handled music for one track (“The Closer You Are to God”), and the Zhoca/Romacoolguy team cooked up that remix.
Background vocals deserve their own paragraph because this album stacks voices like a goddamn choir. Makeda Rose absolutely kills it on “Demon Lady” and “God Only Knows”, Chanelle McGuinness (who previously teamed with Shannon on “Night is Dark” from his debut “Hello Forever”) delivers on “Pull The Plug/Pull The Curtain,” singing parallel lyrics that give the folk-rock track this haunting depth. Gaby Duboisjoli appears on “Happiness Has Come to Town” and “Fall Into Your Arms Again,” and her lyric-for-lyric delivery with Shannon creates this beautiful ambiguity—is she his ex or his current? Doesn’t matter. It works. Ross Harmon shows up on “God Only Knows” and “I Could Fall In Love Again,” while Sarah siki adds vocals to “One Crazy Day.”
Malte Hortsmann‘s piano and Artem Litovchenko‘s cello on “Happiness Has Come to Town” create something that’s both haunting and gorgeous. That track breaks down to piano and strings over Shannon’s voice, and it’s the kind of moment that makes you put down your drink and just listen.
“Demon Lady” is the heaviest track here—and we mean that in every sense. Electric guitars layered against staccato chord strikes, Makeda Rose’s background vocals swirling around, and that final repeating refrain “I think the devil took her soul” before an eclectic lead guitar solo closes it out is Halloween music for adults.
“The Closer You Are to God” might be the album’s thesis statement. With lines like “the closer you are to God, the closer you are to evil, that’s when the dark will find you,” Shannon conduits Job from the Bible—tested, challenged, watching good things get snatched away just when he starts enjoying them.
“Sad Sad Little Man” hits hard too—”I’m just a sad sad little man, trying to fight each day the best I can.” The odd chord changes keep your ears guessing, and when the middle bridge kicks in with “Angels hear my prayers, help me through my pain,” you believe every syllable.
Just when you think you’ve got this album figured out, Shannon throws “When I Look Into Your Eyes” at you—a bossa nova tune with sparse drums (wood block and snare, that’s it) and warm backing vocals. It’s sweet without being saccharine, and after the darkness of “Demon Lady” and theological weight of “The Closer You Are to God,” it lands like a breath.
Then there’s “Captain My Captain (Lord and Savior)”—seafaring imagery, Shannon as a crew member forced to walk the plank by mutineers (his ex and the Devil, if you’re tracking), seeking rescue. The electric guitar creates this falling curtain of sound while the bass and drums keep everything simple and grounded. Tasteful lead guitar solo after the vocal bridge? Yes please.
The Zhoca/Romacoolguy remix of “Pull The Plug/Pull The Curtain” closes things out with 80s-disco keyboards and Zhoca trading lead vocals with Shannon. It’s unexpected, energetic, and it works—partly because the original version (featuring Chanelle McGuinness) is already the folk-rock standout with its fuzzed-out guitar and Celtic instrumentation.
“Highs & lows“ is what happens when a guy stops trying to sound like anyone else and just sings. Eoin Shannon wrote every lyric himself, recorded his vocals at home, and trusted his collaborators—Savage, Magee, Zhoca, and all those vocalists—to build the worlds around his words. The result is a blues-rock record that swings between light and dark, faith and doubt, intimacy and grandeur, without ever losing its grip on your attention.
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