Last Apollo: "I definitely try and go art first always. I think it's the only way to be"

"The reason this album is so special to me is that I started writing songs without thinking about what anyone was thinking of them, and I found it so much more rewarding," reflects Last Apollo.

The Irish artist is joining me over Zoom from her Dublin flat, in the midst of settling down after releasing her first studio album, I'll Walk Towards You, in September. Her stellar new record sees her mature considerably from her first EP, Ordinary Matter - fusing gleaming piano melodies, arched string chords and lyrical honesty.

2026 was a whirlwind year for Last Apollo. In addition to the excitement of preparing, recording and sharing an album, she moved back to Dublin from London, where she had lived since 2023. Despite the decision to return, she appreciates her years across the sea.

"It felt really great to go somewhere where I felt a bit more anonymous because it gave me a freedom to experiment with the way I was writing and be a bit bolder with the musical choices I was making," she says. "It was only a very good thing that I moved."

Last Apollo is visibly excited to be back in a music landscape she adores, citing Irish-French artist Goldbug's new album Swings & Roundabouts and Æ Mak's Folk Songs For Mama & Papa among her favourite listens at the moment.

She is, evidently, no stranger to the Irish music scene, mentioning friends like Gone Forever as inspirations.

"There's a new band, Gone Forever. I went and saw their first gig over the weekend and, you know when you're sitting somewhere like 'This is gonna be very special'?" she recalls. "I work with them a lot and they're always very art first, not really worrying what anyone's going to think about that, and I just find that really inspiring."

Her move to London, Last Apollo elaborates, allowed her to centre her art in the same way she so admires.

"That was definitely one of the reasons I wanted to move to London," she continues. "I was keeping too many other people's opinions in my brain when I was writing. It's taken me a long time to learn it, but I definitely try and go art first always. I think it's the only way to be."

 

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It's not an easy thing to put into practice. Touring with Imelda May, for example, forced her to become confident in her abilities in a way she hadn't been before.

"They're an amazing artist, but our music was quite different. I'm not sure if I was exactly in their audience's bag," she explains. "About halfway through the tour, I met up with Adrian Crowley, he's an amazing artist as well. He was like 'How's the tour going?' and I was like 'Oh, Adrian, they hate it, I can't do it. I don't feel a deep appreciation from the audience.'

"And he was saying that doing a support tour for an artist you feel slightly misaligned with is one of the best things you can do as an artist and one of the hardest things. All the confidence has to come from you. And that's easy to know on paper, but actually having to do it for a month ... From that moment on, I've just felt so much more confident on stage."

Last Apollo supporting Imelda May at Vicar Street on February 9 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

She's toured and worked with an amazing list of artists, including Morgana, SPRINTS, Villagers, Bartees Strange and more. Who else could such a sage young artist look to for wisdom?

"A huge role model for me is definitely Junior Brother. He is an extremely singular artist who is making something that's totally just him and he's been rewarded for it. It's resulted in a really pure piece of art that feels untouched by the industry side of things, and when you go to a gig, you're surrounded by people who really care about his music. Those are the kind of things I aspire to do."

And Last Apollo's music contains the same qualities she lists in Junior Brother's: singular, pure and untouched. Her dedication to her own instincts becomes clearer when she tells me how I'll Walk Towards You came to be recorded in her family home, on the piano she grew up playing.

"I met the producer who wanted to do the album and we were talking about how I wanted it to sound and I knew I wanted it to be a live piano," she describes. "He was like, 'Perfect there's this one at the top of this building. It's really cool you can hear the city around it, or you can go to a studio and do this.'

"Cool things were being offered to me, I was like, 'That all sounds really nice, but I think I want to record it all on my piano', which is obviously my family home piano," she continues. "So he gave me all of his microphones and stuff and I brought it all on a boat back to Ireland over Christmas."

She fondly recalls how her and her band spent the week recording, cooking and spending time together over the holidays.

"When I listen back, it just makes me smile because I think of this really amazing week we had ... I can hear the walls of my house in the album."

It makes sense that I'll Walk Towards You's sound lives in that house, given the people she grew up in it with.

"My parents actually met in a choir, so I really exist because of music, which is a nice way to think," she says. Being part of a musical family, she learned piano young, signed up for all the music clubs at school and says she was "obsessed from day one."

Of her own shows, Last Apollo has several festival appearances and headline sets under her belt, including All Together Now and Croílár, which she described as a "standout gig."

"We put in work and made something we're really proud of and because we're so proud of it the audience are responding to it really well."

 

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So, what's next for an artist on the brink of a watershed moment?

"We'll be playing Borderline in February and then we're gonna start releasing some singles. I wrote the songs off the album three years ago, so there's one billion songs that have to be released. I'm just excited to start working on the next thing too."

Above all, Last Apollo is unwaveringly true to herself. If there's one thing fans should know about her, it's this:

"The feelings are real, all of the emotions are real. I don't come up with stories or narratives, it's all stuff that's real. The reason I do this is because, in moments where you're having a tougher time, it can feel really isolating and then you can hear a song about someone that's gone through something similar like 'This thing is hard but at least I'm not alone in it.'"

• I'll Walk Towards You is out now. Last Apollo plays Bello Bar, Dublin on November 18.