They have been hailed as a band to look out for, their debut EP was critically acclaimed last year, and Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC declared them “one of my favourite new bands” before inviting them on to the bill of his band’s mammoth gig at Finsbury Park in London next month.
Squirrelled away in their rehearsal studio in Cork city, Cardinals are shirking off the buzz – at least for now. Euan Manning, the group’s frontman, his face framed by thick eyebrows that place him somewhere between Morrissey and a young Ian Brown, strikes you as the sort of person who doesn’t get too frazzled by the hype machine.
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“I feel like it does maybe have an effect,” he says, slightly hesitantly. “You’re hoping that you live up to it, but not to a crazy extent. But I don’t know.” He sighs softly, shrugging. “You try to just filter it out and keep the head down and keep working. Try to take it in your stride, I suppose.
“I feel like if you’re going to listen loads to the praise, then when the not-so-nice write-ups come around you’re probably going to end up listening to those, too. So I prefer to ignore both.”
Cardinals plough a similar furrow to The Smiths and other 1980s indie bands, with thoughtful, provocative lyrics and jangly guitars, although theirs is a looser, more raucous and ramshackle approach.
Not that you’d know it by their influences; growing up, Euan and his brother Finn, who plays accordion in Cardinals, were more into rap artists. Euan smiles as he recalls the arguments they would have over Tupac vs Biggie. Now they both agree that the likes of Nas and Wu Tang Clan have been equally influential.
While you certainly can hear traces of fellow Leeside bands such as The Frank and Walters and The Sultans of Ping in the band’s musical DNA, the lyricism of hip-hop has also played a part.
“Especially Nas. I think his lyricism is pretty unmatched,” says Euan. “It’s probably one of the first times that lyrics had a real effect on me, rhyme and meter and those sorts of things – the theory parts of writing songs, the poetic techniques that he used extensively. And then the production and the beats hooked you in as well.
“It was all about the aesthetic image of these guys.” He allows himself a smile. “Which is maybe strange, because we’re small-town Irish country boys.”
Although Cardinals are something of a family affair, with Finn on accordion and their cousin Darragh on drums (joined by Aaron Hurley on bass and Oskar Gudinovic on guitar), the band members, still in their early 20s, only came to fruition in recent years. Songwriting, says Euan, didn’t become a serious pursuit until the first Covid lockdown.
“I’d been doing a bit of writing before that, [but] all I cared about was playing video games for a very long time,” he says, smiling. “Then I found one morning that I didn’t really care about it as much any more, and I had this great fear. I needed to find something to fill the gap. I think that’s when it became important to me.”
It was only about two years ago, he says, that the band found the sound they wanted to pursue after cycling through various subgenres. Their new single, Big Empty Heart, shows they’re evolving at a rate of knots: it’s a huge stride forward from early songs such as Amsterdam, their self-released debut single, with its tentative murmur, from 2022.
“And the stuff that we’re doing now is different from what was even heard on [last year’s] EP, really,” he says. “It feels more cohesive as a body of work. It’s more like us and less like we’re wearing our inspirations on our sleeves.”
It’s not just music that has provided the band, who are from Kinsale, with inspiration for songwriting. Euan has previously spoken about how other artforms, including the work of the stained-glass artist Harry Clarke, have been an influence, and the whole band acknowledges how film – particularly Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy – played a big part in shaping Big Empty Heart and its accompanying video.
Another element that sets Cardinals apart from their peers is Finn’s accordion-playing, a skill acquired from the brothers’ grandfather. It can be a difficult instrument to tour with, he says, not least when he’s going through airport security.
“No matter where I am, they think it’s like a bomb or something, because on the X-ray it looks crazy,” says Finn, laughing. “I often get asked to take it out of the box in the airport and play a tune. I did it in Amsterdam once, and the guy called it gypsy music. But I’ve got to be careful with it: if it’s fecked I can’t get my hands on another one, like I could with a guitar.”
He began playing the instrument at the age of 10 or 11, initially in the traditional style, but gave it up in favour of the guitar in his late teens. While at college in Galway, he picked it back up “not to play traditional stuff on but to use as a tool, I suppose,” he says. “I liked the idea of taking what I knew from the guitar and trying to play it on the accordion.
“When I’m [playing] it with Cardinals I’m pretty conscious of not trying to make it like a traditional Irish sound – because I’m not massively crazy about that sound, the mixing of Irish traditional and rock music. Some bands have done it well – but more bands probably not so well. So I’m conscious of writing something for the sake of the song rather for the sake of the instrument.”
The inclusion of a traditional instrument in a rock band is a good segue into Euan’s assertion that Irish culture was being “fetishised” by international audiences, although he has altered his position somewhat since he made those comments earlier in the year.
“I almost feel like with the news in the past few weeks, things have flipped around. There might now be a villainisation of Irish culture with the Kneecap stuff,” says Euan, referring to the terrorism charge brought against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, aka Mo Chara, of the Belfast group, for allegedly displaying a Hizbullah flag at a gig in London in November 2024.
“It’s mind boggling to us.” He shakes his head. “There seems to be this real turn to the right all over the world, but there’s great support for them. We think they’re great, and courageous, and brave for how they’re handling it. But, yeah, right now I think things feel a little bit different.”
“I think people kind of pick and choose what they like about Irish culture a lot, and I think that’s part of the fetishisation,” adds Finn. “But, yeah, there’s definitely a certain villainisation going on because of [Irish bands’ vocal support for Palestine] now, too.
“It’s a pretty standard view for Irish people in general, I’d say – especially our generation, and especially artists – but I think people kind of had this idea of what the ‘perfect Irish artist’ was in their head. And now they’re looking into it more, and seeing that a lot of us hold the same point of view on social justice – and maybe some Americans and Israelis are not too impressed.” He shrugs. “But it’s important.”
Cardinals will share the support bill with Kneecap at Finsbury Park, which is likely to propel their trajectory skywards for the second half of 2025. An album is already in the works, with a tentative release scheduled for early 2026. If they keep advancing at the pace they’re at, who knows where they might be in five years.
“It’s a pretty big question,” says Euan. “I mean, we’d just like to be releasing work that we’re very proud of. But I think that we’re all very ambitious as well – so if we can shoot for winning a Grammy or selling out a stadium or whatever, why not, like? You know? You just might as well think about it.”
A smile plays on his lips. “You know, we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think that we were capable of such feats. So shoot for the moon and stars, and all that.”
Big Empty Heart is released by So Young Records. Cardinals play Finsbury Park, in London, with Fontaines DC on Saturday, July 5th, and Kinsale Arts Weekend, in Co Cork, on Sunday, July 13th
