The Cardinals: All hail Cork's hottest new band
Cardinals were formed in Kinsale, and will soon release their debut EP. Euan Manning, second from right, with Oskar Gudinovic (guitar and keyboards), Aaron Hurley (bass), Kieran Hurley (guitar) and Darragh Manning. Picture: Ali Quinlan
The first time up-and-coming Cork indie band Cardinals played Dublin, six people showed up and the staff asked the musicians to turn down the volume during their soundcheck as it was putting customers off their pints.
“The barman told us to quiet down when we were soundchecking,” singer Euan Manning chuckles over Zoom from the group’s HQ in St Lukes on the northside of Cork. “The green room was a retired kitchen. It was good to play for nobody because you can take risks. The bar was going on downstairs. Apparently we were disturbing the patrons.”
Cardinals have come a long way in the two years since that early show, with their upcoming EP, If I Could Make You Care, attracting levels of attention not witnessed by Cork musicians since the heyday of the Sultans of Ping and The Frank and Walters. Rolling Stone UK heralded the six-piece’s “brooding indie mixed with intense shoegaze”; The NME praised them for combining the “atmospherics” of Echo and the Bunnymen with the “scratchy indie” of Yo La Tengo.
They’ve also been championed by Grian Chatten, of arena-filling post-punks Fontaines DC, who told BBC 6 Music that Cardinals were one of his favourite new bands. They appreciate the kind thoughts and supportive words.
However, Manning and his bandmates aren’t letting the attention go to their heads and are determined to stay grounded and close to their roots in Cork. Most of the band met at school in Kinsale, and they grew up thinking of Cork city, just 17 miles away, as a place of escape and possibility. That sense of yearning comes through powerfully in their songs and in Manning’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics – which have a painter’s eye for detail and poet’s ear for a heartbreaking rhyme.
Those qualities are front and centre of last February’s single Roseland, where Manning recalls wandering the streets of Cork, thinking about the past, the future, and the ghosts of paths not taken.
“I went down to MacCurtain Street Station/Where I first said my last goodbye,” he sings over a blaze of REM-style guitars. “If love was there, it was thin in the air/It only came here to die.”
It’s a wonderful calling card for Cardinals: heartfelt and raw-boned – and universes removed from the pummelling punk-pop coming out of Dublin courtesy of bands such as Sprints and Fontaines DC.
“As an artist you’re always influenced by the space you’re in. I’ve always felt that wherever I’ve lived,” says Manning.
“I’ve spent a little time in Dublin, a little in Dingle. Obviously in Kinsale. But Cork city has been where I’ve been living for when I’ve been in Cardinals. The people and the city itself and the city’s characters has definitely been throughout the music.”
Cardinals also feature Oskar Gudinovic (guitar and keyboards), Aaron Hurley (bass), Kieran Hurley (guitar) and Darragh Manning (drums). Their first gig was upstairs at the An Spailpín Fánach pub on South Main Street, opposite the old Beamish brewery. They went on to become regulars at Fred Zeppelins, a spit and sawdust rock bar off the Grand Parade.
“When we started we were lucky we knew a couple of who had already been in the scene for a little while and had a practice space and knew about booking gigs. They are some good venues to start off in. I feel you get to a certain level and there’s no -mid-sized venues. There’s a jump from [80 capacity] Fred Zeppelins to [500 capacity] Cyprus Avenue. We found ourselves getting off the ground fairly easily - because we knew some people. If you didn’t people, I could see it being more challenging. I still think it’s quite accessible. There’s a good community.”
Growing up in Kinsale, they saw both sides of life. There is huge wealth in the town, where average house prices exceed half a million euro. But they all come from normal backgrounds – Manning grew up in the countryside outside Kinsale – and attended the local public school.
“In the 1990s, it was a fishing town that wouldn’t have been that affluent. You see it now – there’s a road in Kinsale that is the second most expensive to buy a house in Ireland,” says Manning. “There are people coming in and buying property. It’s a massive tourist town. Living there you see it in a different sense than other parts of the country would see Kinsale. It is lovely. But people are being pushed out of it as well, which is unfortunate.”
In some quarters, there has been an attempt to portray Cardinals as a sort of anti-Fontaines DC – a lush, songwriterly riposte to the harsh, brittle sound coming out of Dublin. They certainly exist within their own self-contained musical universe. But they never set out to be a reaction against other groups.
“When were beginning to write music a lot of the stuff we were hearing coming out of Ireland was that post-punk thing coming out of Dublin. Which was cool. And there were some bands that we liked. But it felt very saturated by the time we started doing our own time,” says Manning.
“We’re influenced by American bands, by Irish bands, influenced by British bands. It all comes together in that way. I guess we just wanted to do what we wanted to do and distinguish ourselves from what was going on up the country.”
They say Cork is the real influence—artists such as Rory Gallagher, the Frank and Walters and Sultans of Ping. But also the sense of the city existing apart from the rest of the country.
“Early influences like listening to Rory Gallagher and stuff like that would have been big. Just getting into rock’ n roll music. We have a lot of reverence for a lot of stuff [from the City] – but taking our idea of Cork with that. It’s going from our own experience. We are fans. They [the Franks and Sultans] would have been early influences. To see a group in Cork or a musician in Cork, you go ‘yeah they did it – I’m going to do it too'.”
- If I Could Make You Care EP is released June 7
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