Ste Kelly with Oblivion: Midnight Thoughts And the Price of Peace

22/09/2025 53 11 5

Waiting for the Light in the Fog

I first heard Oblivion on one of those strange in-between mornings. You know the type – when the kettle boils slower than usual, the outside world feels a little too quiet, and your own thoughts have the nerve to start talking back. I pressed play, not expecting a damn thing. But Ste Kelly writes like someone who’s looked life straight in the face and didn’t blink.

Oblivion walks a different path. It moves without glitter, like a slow breath in the middle of noise – real and steady. Just a quiet weight pressing down, asking questions like “Do we win / Do we lose / In oblivion?” I didn’t have answers. Still don’t. But I listened. With Oblivion, Kelly sets the tone for Midnight Manifesto – an album that promises to lean into questions we all carry.

From Wicklow to the Wide Unknown

If you’ve ever wandered through Ireland on a wet afternoon, headphones in, watching strangers move like clockwork, you already know the soul of this track. Ste Kelly is known to many from RAGLANS. Remember that 2014 chart-busting debut?. He’s been in the trenches. Toured with The Libertines, Haim, The Fray. Wrote a song (Who Knows) that got a nod from the Choice Music Prize. Built his own label – Maybe Vagrant Records – because sometimes the only answer worth chasing is your own.

But Oblivion leads with feeling. That’s the whole story. It sighs humanity, and that’s what cuts through. The lyrics are almost too bare: “We spend all our money / We save all our tears / Waiting for oblivion / Now it’s here.” There’s something beautifully cruel in that line, like saving your best wine for the apocalypse.

Finn Keenan’s People Watching Masterpiece

The video? Well, that’s a chapter on its own. Directed by long-time collaborator Finn Keenan – who’s also the guy behind KNEECAP’s cinematic chaos – it’s a quietly explosive visual diary of modern Ireland. Faces you’ve never met but somehow know. Old faces, young ones, every shade and story. Most of them smile. Some carry a kind of quiet hope that says, “We’re still here.”

And here’s the thing – Finn made the video without Ste even asking. One late-night WhatsApp voice memo, and the guy just went and dug through years of footage like it was waiting for this moment. A gift. And the kind we don’t often get in this business – honest, unprompted, and strangely perfect.

Final Words from the Back of the Room

I’ve heard thousands of tracks in my life. Written about many, promoted more than I can count. But sometimes, a song feels like process, and not like a product. Ste Kelly’s Oblivion is that song. And sometimes, we need to hear those more than the hits. A three-minute meditation on inevitability, survival, and that quiet moment when you realise the map was always just a sketch.

And if you’re asking me – yeah, this is his best work so far. Maybe it’s the tone, maybe it’s the timing – but it lines up with the way the world feels right now. Listen, watch, or just sit with it a while. Whatever you do, don’t rush it.