On his 2021 debut as For Those I Love, David Balfe closed the gap between performance poetry, moody 1980s synthpop and sample-stuffed electronica to craft an evocative eulogy for his friend Paul Curran, who died by suicide in 2018. The result was Kae Tempest meets New Order via the densely referential lyrics of Real Lies; a set of songs steeped in lump-in-the-throat nostalgia for more innocent times, and in the muted echoes of dancefloor euphoria.

On this follow-up, the Dublin musician – now in his early 30s – adjusts his subject while clinging tightly to his fury and devastation. Aside from The Ox/The Afters, a tribute to a former hardman who dies from drink, there’s not much literal grief on Carving the Stone – but Balfe is still in mourning. His psychic wound is more abstract now, a slow-blooming bruise caused by the brutal Irish economy and the tech-addled meaninglessness of modernity. Over a boisterously ravey backdrop, No Scheme chronicles the lifestyles of Balfe’s erstwhile contemporaries (“life above their means / And driven mad by phone scams and everyday still spent on Facebook”), while Mirror rages against “cunting blackshirts” who promote nationalistic beliefs to the workers they exploit.

Carving the Stone’s portraits of new kinds of poverty are too depressing – and depressingly accurate – to be beautiful, although the music offers occasional bursts of strange joy (Civic’s frantic breakbeat; the fiddle break in Of the Sorrows), while Balfe’s heartfelt, hyper-focused social commentary means it’s rare to find an album this rich in meaning.