Cardinals share new single ‘Unreal’

Cardinals | Photo Credit: Emilyn Cardona

Praise for ‘Roseland’:

"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

"They've only got a few (excellent) songs to their name so far... 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." 

Ones To Watch 2024: 10 Musicians To Watch Out For, The Independent

"Judging by the strength of this debut, it looks like another music giant could be about to step out of Ireland."

DIY

"On their debut single, Cardinals offered the most fascinating of sonic prospects – brooding indie mixed with intense shoegaze and subtle shades of their Irish folk beginnings. The result is a thing of curious brilliance and one that has led them to secure fans in high places: Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten recently described the Cork group as “one of my favourite new bands”. High praise indeed."

Ones To Watch in 2024, Rolling Stone UK

"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

Ireland's Cardinals return today with ‘Unreal’, their much-anticipated follow-up to last year's debut single proper, ‘Roseland’, a song saw them heralded across press for the maturity and fully-formed nature of their sound. The 7" vinyl, released on tastemaker label So Young, went on to hurriedly sell out within only two hours of its announce.

‘Unreal’ acts as a direct counterpart to the broodiness of ‘Roseland’, displaying a fervent, youthful energy and clear pop sensibility at play within the group. Opening with a blast of feedback and followed with real melodic ambition at its heart, these three minutes surely soar.

Front man Euan Manning had the following to say about the single:

"Unreal was written in the back of a Ford Transit van that I happened to be living in at the time. It reminds me of warm days spent on the beaches at home back in Cork. I remember learning a Beach Boys song, taking one of the chords from it, and building a whole new song, this one, around it."

‘Unreal’, and ‘Roseland’ before it, follow a self-release, ‘Amsterdam’ and its B-side ‘The Brow’, uploaded early last year to Bandcamp. Fervent word of mouth spread across Ireland around these tentative releases and the enigmatic early live shows from the six-piece.

Watch the video for ‘Unreal’ here
Watch the video for ‘Roseland’ here

Following a filmed performance for Other Voices in their homeland, and the enviable support of Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten, who called them "one of my favourite new bands" during an interview with BBC Radio 1, the band performed for The Great Escape's First Fifty at the tail end of last year and will now perform at the main festival in May, with their first US performances confirmed to take place before then at SXSW next month.

Today the band have also announced their first headline tour for the UK & Ireland.

Tickets go on sale this Friday at 9am.

Cardinals live:

Mar

8th-16th SXSW, Austin

May

9th Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
11th Yes (Basement), Manchester
12th McChullis, Glasgow
14th The Windmill, London
15th The Joiners, Southampton
16th The Great Escape, Brighton
24th Róisín Dubh, Galway
25th Kasbah Social Club, Limerick
26th Cyprus Avenue, Cork

More information on Cardinals:

Starting as a light-hearted idea between two sixteen-year-olds in a sleepy fishing town on the southern coast of Ireland, a whole joke-taken-to-heart later and their difference is marked by an early immersion in Cork’s live music scene, "we were into what we were hearing but knew we could never be part of it, we wanted to juxtapose ourselves," says front man Euan Manning, "not for the sake of doing something different but because we have pop-leaning influences and didn’t want to shy away from that." Now barely twenty, the six-piece are next in an Irish line changing the sound of alternative music. 

Perpetually keeping outside of their comfort zone, their sound has echoes of Big Music, of the effervescence of 80s indie, conjuring up an eclectic, gothic amalgam of shoegaze, Irish trad folk and alternative music for an ambitious sound that has already carved them out as a marked side-step to the recent bands who've broken through around them.

‘Unreal’, like ‘Roseland’ before it, was recorded with Richie Kennedy (U2, Interpol) with further music to follow in 2024.

Cardinals are:

Euan Manning - guitar and vocals
Kieran Hurley - guitar
Oskar Gudinovic - guitar
Aaron Hurley - bass
Finn Manning - accordion
Darragh Manning - drums