Fast-rising Irish folk trio Amble are dreaming big when it comes to their second LP, Love And All Its Wares. Ahead of its early 2027 release, the band talk about giving up jobs in teaching and science to sign with Warner Records, why AI is the “antithesis” of art, and the benefits of internal rivalry...
WORDS: CHARLOTTE KROL
"People are thinking, ‘What the fuck is this lad on about?’” laughs Robbie Cunningham. Amble’s lead vocalist and guitarist is in a coffee shop in Ireland, reeling off to Music Week his ambitions to headline Madison Square Garden, Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Dublin’s Croke Park.
“I’m half taking the piss, but you can’t help but dream,” he adds. “We’ve come from competitive backgrounds in life – it’s a big part of why we’ve got this far.”
Cunningham is joined on the video call by his bandmates Oisín McCaffrey (guitarist/vocalist) and Ross McNerney (mandolin/bouzouki/banjo) to speak about Amble’s new LP, Love And All Its Wares. The musicians are scattered across the country today, coming down from the high of playing the 80,000-capacity Electric Picnic festival. “It was very special,” smiles McCaffrey.
The ambitions that his bandmate half-jokes about aren’t unfounded. Since signing with Warner Records in 2024, the trio have racked up 1.8 million monthly Spotify listeners and 4m TikTok likes. Their 2025 debut LP, Reverie, topped the Irish charts and became the biggest-selling Irish album since 2019.
Add to that support slots for Ed Sheeran and Hozier, RTÉ Choice Music Prize awards, and selling out recent headline dates such as at O2 Academy Brixton, and Amble are making good on their North Star thinking.
The musicians’ lives have changed significantly since they formed the band as near-strangers in 2022. Back then, McNerney was a middle- school teacher in County Longford, while Cunningham taught at a primary school in Dublin. McCaffrey was a data scientist who’d moved from County Sligo to Dublin.
Cunningham had seen McCaffrey’s Instagram videos of covers and reached out to find a jam partner. Not long after, the pair were offered a gig in Cunningham’s hometown in County Leitrim, and McCaffrey invited McNerney to join. A call soon came in from Warner Records A&R Sean Stevens.
“I know the three of us feel very lucky to have met that man,” Cunningham says of Stevens. “Bar Ross and Oisín, he’s the only other person I’ve ever listened to for advice or for thoughts on a song. We’ve become good friends with him and he’s the huge link between us and the label.”
But he initially bats away assumptions that Amble wouldn’t have been successful without major label backing. Ever the competitive bandleader, he believes that they’d have played Electric Picnic without a record deal in place.
Surely they recognise that it gave them the confidence to give up their jobs?
“It was a big turning point,” Cunningham admits. “We thought, ‘We’re going to take this seriously.’”
With their second album incoming, it’s put to Amble whether they feel pressure to surpass Reverie’s success.
“I don’t feel the pressure on that,” says McNerney. “But I definitely feel the pressure in staying true to who we are.”
Love And… was recorded over three weeks at Westmeath’s Grouse Lodge Studios in April. A host of other “very talented” musicians, says Cunningham, were enlisted to help the band flesh out their sound. “You’re surrounded by an energy that’s hard to explain,” McNerney reflects on the “beautiful” rural setting, complementary to their folk tunes’ earthy burr.
Unlike Reverie, which McCaffrey likens to a “jigsaw puzzle” of songs that were written individually, long before the trio met, Love And… is the result of working together as an established entity and is, in a way, their debut proper.And with accordions, violins, uilleann pipes and more instruments thrown into the mix, Amble’s sound has “definitely progressed”, Cunningham adds, though he doesn’t think it has “flipped the sound upside down”.
Day-one Amble fans will still find plenty to love. Recent single, Last Rites, is threaded with the band’s signature vocal harmonies and richly layered guitars, but has a greater kinetic energy. Producer Philip Weinrobe (Big Thief, Billie Marten), meanwhile, was enlisted for the LP.
“Ross, Oisín and I credit ourselves as being similar in the studio, leaving in the mistakes,” Cunningham says. “But Philip is an amazing, next-level purist.”
On Last Rites, Cunningham sings about the strain and beauty of touring (‘My words are tired, my feet are sore /Yet [...] I’m walking more...’). Is that reflective of their recent history, clocking up 130 shows in 2025?
“We’ve lived mostly on a tour bus and it is tough,” says Cunningham. “There are so many times where you think, ‘The last thing I want to do is get on stage and pretend I’m happy.’ Sometimes, you forget why you’re on tour in a random city, but then you play and it all makes so much sense. Nothing could make more sense than playing music with these lads to a crowd and the fulfilment you get.”
McCaffrey believes he has “honestly become a better person” through touring.
“I used to sit on my laptop at home working Monday to Friday – I’d barely see anyone – and now I’m socialising all the time,” he says. “And people are so grateful for the music we make. I’m in the west of Ireland at the moment, and I’m learning that people here have been playing Amble at funerals, christenings, weddings…”
Before our conversation wraps, there’s a snatch of time to ask Amble about wider industry issues, such as AI.
“It’s the antithesis of every art form,” says Cunningham.
McCaffrey chimes in: “I can speak on behalf of all of us that we’re not going to engage with it in any way.”
You can never “substitute” for real, human-made and performed music, McCaffrey offers.
“That real experience of Ross ripping a bouzouki right beside me onstage,” he adds. “I had to be pulled away that night at Electric Picnic because I was in heaven. We got off stage and played music for hours backstage because we just felt so lucky.”
It’s not just this passion that has shaped them, though. McCaffrey also cites the band’s competitive nature.
“You don’t hear it that often in the music industry, but it’s true,” he says. “We’re competitive in every facet.”
Cunningham butts in: “We need to put an asterisk there, though; it’s competitiveness within the band.”
“Lennon/McCartney!” McCaffrey yells, as they bid us farewell.
ESSENTIAL INFO
RELEASE: Love And All Its Wares (out January 29)
LABEL: Warner Records
MANAGEMENT: Jett Desmond
WHAT THE TEAM SAYS:
Jett Desmond, manager & promoter, MCD: “With Love And..., Amble have evolved into a true band, not just writing as individuals. The music is more cohesive, and watching them grow from playing 100-cap clubs to arenas and headlining festivals is incredible.”
Sean Stevens, senior VP, A&R, Warner Records: “There’s an immediacy and an honesty to Amble that has only grown more refined. It’s no mystery that they’ve found themselves atop the charts and playing giant shows so quickly. They are artists/songwriters in the truest sense, and listeners will always resonate with the real thing.”
