There’s an immediate devastating beauty to It’s Not Going to Be Okay, the new album from Belfast-based experimental folk artist Joshua Burnside. It’s a record born out of loss and the fragile act of continuing. Written and recorded in the wake of the death of his closest friend, musician Dean Jendoubi, the album is Burnside’s most stripped-back and unguarded work to date.
Burnside is routinely lauded for his intricate production and layered storytelling, here, he pares everything down here to its rawest form. Recorded and mixed in his small room at Vault Artist Studios in Belfast, It’s Not Going to Be Okay is tender and unflinching, highlighting the beautiful simplicity of Burnside’s acoustic balladry and his poetic lyrics. “I didn’t want to rely on weird sounds or quirky production,” he says. “I wanted the songs to stand on their own two feet.”
Where previous Burnside albums explored folklore, politics, and myth through surreal, tense textures and offbeat folk supplemented by electronica, It’s
Not Going to Be Okay distils his brilliance down with immaculate precision where each track serves like an entry into a grief journal.
Across the album, Burnside meditates on grief, love, and the stubborn persistence of hope. On “With You,” he confronts the unbearable surreality of standing at a friend’s grave, while “Good Times” disguises its despair beneath the brightness of its melody, a sardonic ode to the highs and lows of self-destruction. The title track, “It’s Not Going to Be Okay,” turns anger and confusion into catharsis, personifying the darkness of the world with typical biting clarity.
Elsewhere, Burnside allows small flickers of transcendence to break through. “Moon High” captures the numbing disassociation of grief with aching simplicity, while “The Last Armchair” and “Something Else” search for childlike wonder amid existential exhaustion. Closing track “Remake” offers a quiet, almost mystical surrender — imagining time as circular, a recurring film in which we’re all recast, again and again.
“It’s a grief record,” he admits, “but also a love record for Dean, for my family, for being alive at all.
Joshua Burnside is an experimental folk songwriter, singer and producer. He takes influence from alternative electronica trad, and Irish folk, chopping and blending them with a mixture of found sounds, world music and unorthodox production methods Joshua’s critically acclaimed “Teeth of Time” released earlier this year, was nominated for RTE 1 Folk Awards, and received glowing support from the likes of MOJO, Uncut, Songlines, Irish Times, KLOF Mag and, The Thin Air, Nialler 9, Hot Press and BBC Alba and solid BBC Radio 2 & BBC 6Music support.
He now marks a new era and prepares for both his East Coast US Tour and performance at Dingle's Other Voices later this year, and a large UK and EU headline tour in 2026.
