PHOTO CREDIT: EMILYN CARDONA
Selected praise for Cardinals:
“The next great guitar band to emerge from Ireland.”
Rolling Stone UK
“Roseland is a sensational song. It combines rumbling bass, spiky post-punk, Television-like guitar, glam-rock melodrama and Euan Manning’s deadpan vocals which rise to a Jarvis Cockeresque yelp. What a start.”
Breaking Act, The Sunday Times
“Set on writing future classics, the six-piece’s captivating sound traverses both the atmospheric bluster of Echo and the Bunnymen and the scratchy indie of Yo La Tengo.”
NME
“Standing apart from their Irish post-punk peers while earning their admiration at the same time, they conjure a sound that nods to Eighties indie, Celtic shoegaze and goth-glam.”
The Independent
“Impressively confident, swaggering indie-rock.”
Stereogum
“Kinsale’s finest.”
Hot Press
“Cork’s genre-defying Cardinals channel their city’s idiosyncrasies into a dizzying artistic revolution on their brilliant debut EP.”
Dork
“It looks like another music giant could be about to step out of Ireland.”
DIY
“Reminiscent of ‘Fables…’ era R.E.M. in places, it adds some folksy elements – the slight swing in the rhythm, the accordion notes – to the mixture. Open and organic, Cardinals seem confident enough to let their music breathe. A sign, perhaps, of the precocity of their live shows, or the naivety of youth.”
CLASH
“A by turns raucous and tearfully romantic tune that sways and rouses itself like The Pogues, Echo And The Bunnymen and The Waterboys out on the tiles together. Plus, the chorus bears a passing resemblance to Billy Joel’s Piano Man which I am very much on board with. It’s so good that I’m popping it right up top. Sorry to all you other songs down there.”
Recommender, The New Cue
Today the Cork five-piece Cardinals share their first new material of 2025 in “Big Empty Heart”. Recorded with producer Shrink at RAK Studios, the band’s frontman Euan Manning had the following to say about their dynamic new single, one that set roots long before the band formed:
“Big Empty Heart is a love song written from beyond the grave. It is a waltz as waltzes are the most romantic kinds of songs. Oskar wrote the main melody on a Korg synthesiser when he was 12 and the song is built around that.”
“Big Empty Heart” follows last year’s one-off single “Get It” and before that an acclaimed debut EP for the tastemaker label So Young Records. Those six songs displayed the innate warmth of their songwriting, and “Big Empty Heart” has a similar feel, the cyclical sounds of the accordion adding a traditional element to a song and sound that feels both familiar and at once startlingly new.
LISTEN TO “BIG EMPTY HEART” HERE
WATCH VIDEO FOR “BIG EMPTY HEART” HERE
Following support from Grian Chatten, who called them “one of my favourite new bands” during an interview with BBC Radio 1, Cardinals have their biggest show yet coming up next month, where they’ll open for Fontaines D.C. at their huge Finsbury Park show on July 5th.
Other notable fans of the group include the actor Cillian Murphy and Belfast’s Kneecap who named the group as one of the artists from Ireland they’re most excited about during a recent interview with the NME.
In August, the band will play with Wunderhorse twice in Dublin before returning to the US in September to support The Pogues in Boston and perform a string of their own headline dates.
The band have also announced a new UK headline tour today for September. Pre-sale begins at 9am Wednesday, 11th June before tickets go on wider sale at 9am on Friday, 13th June.
Cardinals live:
5th July – Finsbury Park w/ Fontaines D.C.
19th August – Collins Barracks, Dublin w/ Wunderhorse
20th August – Collins Barracks, Dublin w/ Wunderhorse
7th September – The Stage at Suffolk Downs, Boston, MA w/ The Pogues
9th September – Horseshoe, Toronto, ON, CA
11th September – Cobra Lounge, Chicago, IL, US
13th September – Rickshaw, San Francisco, CA
16th September – Zebulon, Los Angeles, CA
22nd September – Bristol, Strange Brew
23rd September 2025 – Southampton, Joiners
25th September 2025 – Norwich, Waterfront Studio
26th September 2025 – Leeds, Belgrave
27th September 2025- Manchester, Yes Pink Room
29th September 2025- Brighton, Patterns
30th September 2025 – London, Moth Club
15th October – The Curtin, Melbourne
16th October – Metro Social, Sydney
More information on Cardinals:
Tracksuited, denim and leather clad and hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses, the Cork five-piece, Cardinals, look like they’ve just stepped out of Warhol’s factory in Midtown Manhattan rather than the picturesque village of Kinsale, and yet to live in a Cardinals song is to be surrounded by a grainy, monochromatic landscape that holds both a gritty rock and roll nostalgia and the rolling hills of Ireland’s traditional musical past.
Their Pogues-leaning, shanty-esque verses swoon into room-filling choruses, and often cloak dark and brooding tales of love in gentle first-person conversational narratives. Their critically acclaimed debut EP Cardinals is an eclectic gothic amalgam of shoegaze, pop, Irish trad folk, and rock which incorporates 60s Wall of Sound and poetry-inflected punk.
Cardinals are:
Euan Manning – guitar and vocals
Oskar Gudinovic – guitar
Aaron Hurley – bass
Finn Manning – accordion
Darragh Manning – drums