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

"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

 The Cork five-piece Cardinals return today with a new single, "Get It", their first material since a widely-acclaimed debut EP landed at the start of the summer on tastemaker label So Young Records.

That six-song EP displayed the innate warmth of their songwriting, and new single "Get It" follows in the same vein whilst shooting still higher, both immediately melodic and full of heart.


Already a live favourite, the band recorded "Get It" with Chris Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad, Robocobra Quartet) at his Belfast studio earlier this year with their frontman Euan Manning having the following to say about the themes behind the track:

“To me it's a song about reflection, looking at what went wrong but also at what went right. The worst and the best. Its climax crowns love as an overwhelmingly positive force, whichever type of love that may be. It’s a change of pace for us and definitely feels like a bridging moment for what’s to come next.”

The band have already seen enviable support from Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten, who called them "one of my favourite new bands" during an interview with BBC Radio 1, and only last month Kneecap named the group as one of the artists from Ireland they're most excited about during an interview with the NME.

Following a string of sold-out dates across 2024 in the UK and at home in Ireland, the band have a busy live schedule ahead.

This includes a performance at Pitchfork London in November, followed by a support stint with New York's Been Stellar across the UK, dates in Ireland and then the band's first trip to NYC for headlining shows there in December.

Cardinals have also added an intimate London headliner for 4th November, performing at Third Man.
 

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