Some records take their time finding the light. Others arrive carrying the weight of everything that came before them. For Irish musician Leigh Arthur, Wait of the World is four years of uncertainty, heartbreak and personal reckoning finally finding their way out into the open. Released on 23 October, Leigh’s debut album under her own name arrives alongside the video for ‘Too Little Too Late’, a striking introduction to an artist who has turned vulnerability into something far more powerful than confession.
Leigh is no stranger to the underground. Having cut her teeth in Dublin’s DIY scene with lo-fi punk outfit Sissy, post-punk trio Extravision and power-pop band Music City, she has spent years moving through the spaces where independent music thrives without permission or polish. But Wait of the World reveals a different side of her songwriting: intimate, melodic and emotionally exposed, with a sharp edge lurking beneath its deceptively soft exterior.
The album’s title carries a double meaning, playing on the wait and the weight of being trapped in a moment when moving forward feels impossible. Written during a period of depression and anxiety, the songs began as something intensely personal, with no real intention of being shared. They were a way of making sense of a difficult chapter, rather than a statement intended for an audience. “I needed the mirror of these songs, to get through a really tough period,” Leigh explains. “It’s impossible to be honest with yourself when you’re worried about being judged.”
The newly released video for ‘Too Little Too Late’ brings that emotional journey into focus. The track is the centrepiece of the album’s visual world, completing a self-directed triptych of 16mm films that began with ‘Same Eyes’ and continued with ‘Suddenly’. Together, the three videos trace a journey out of Dublin and towards an unfamiliar shore, reflecting the personal upheaval and shifting sense of home that run through the record.
Working with cinematographers Rowan Sherrard, Oisín McFarland Smith and Leona Kramaric, Leigh has created a visual project that feels inseparable from the music itself. Rather than treating the videos as promotional extras, she has built a connected piece of storytelling around the songs, using analogue film and a collaborative, hands-on approach to extend their emotional reach. “Making things together for the fun of making them together – it’s play, it’s experiment, it’s freedom,” she says. That spirit of experimentation is fitting for an artist whose roots are firmly planted in DIY culture. Leigh’s work moves between music, film, theatre and animation, and her approach to the Wait of the World visuals reflects a commitment to making things because they need to exist, not because they fit neatly into a marketing plan.
Musically, ‘Too Little Too Late’ marks a turning point. When Leigh first heard the song out loud, she realised that the emotion beneath it was not simply sadness, but fury. Recorded across North East London with producer Jonah Falco, known for his work as a member of Toronto punk band Fucked Up and for producing a range of contemporary punk acts, the album expands on the guitar-and-voice foundations of Leigh’s earlier writing. The result is a fuller, more adventurous sound, drawing on garage pop, power pop, Americana and a distinctly bittersweet melodic sensibility.
Leigh’s influences stretch from The Pretenders, Blondie and Joan Jett to PJ Harvey, Angel Olsen and The Replacements, but Wait of the World never feels like an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, it draws from those traditions to create something personal: music that understands the power of a great melody while leaving enough room for discomfort, ambiguity and emotional mess. “I love when punks make non-punk music,” Leigh says. It is a telling statement from someone who has emerged from a scene built on independence and community. The punk ethos remains present, not necessarily in volume or aggression, but in the freedom to follow an idea wherever it leads. The album does not abandon Leigh’s underground roots; it stretches them into new territory.
At its emotional centre sits ‘Dublin’, a song about the complicated relationship between a person and the place they once called home. It is a love letter to the city, touching on familiar venues and the memories attached to them, while acknowledging the distance that can grow between who we were and who we have become. Leigh’s own move to London became an unexpectedly long chapter in that story. What was supposed to be a short stay to record the album turned into four years away from Ireland, reshaping her understanding of home and belonging. “I didn’t move to London. I just went there for two months to record this record and four years later here it is.”
Now preparing to return to Ireland, Leigh is still negotiating what home means and whether a place can feel familiar after so much has changed. That uncertainty gives Wait of the World much of its emotional depth. These are songs about the gap between the life we recognise and the life we know we can no longer inhabit. Even the album artwork follows that instinct to reconnect with the physical world. Created with longtime friend Karen Browett, an experimental artist and punk musician, the cover was shot using a homemade pinhole camera during Browett’s residency in Bray. The image was developed at Signal Arts Centre using sea beet foraged from a local beach and tomato leaf grown from seed. “Bringing it home to where the songs were written feels right,” Leigh says. “It’s physical, visceral, healing.”
Despite its heartbreak, Wait of the World is not an album interested in romanticising misery. There is warmth in its melodies, movement in its arrangements and a hard-won sense of possibility running beneath the sadness. “Mourning what you had is learning to carry the pain but not let it stop you from living,” she says.
Leigh Arthur’s debut album, Wait of the World, is released on 23 October, alongside the video for ‘Too Little Too Late’.
