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The profile · researched 3 November 2026
Cardinals: the Kinsale six who turned Cork's history into a debut album
Cardinals are an indie rock band from Kinsale, County Cork, whose debut album Masquerade reached No. 3 on Ireland's Independent Chart in February 2026. They are now most of the way through a year of near-continuous touring that has taken them from 100-capacity Cork pubs to Camden's Electric Ballroom.
Seventeen miles from the city
Cardinals come from Kinsale, a harbour town in County Cork about seventeen miles from Cork city, which the band have described as a place of escape and possibility rather than somewhere they actually lived. Most of them grew up there and met at school. The line-up is built around one family: Euan Manning sings and plays guitar, his brother Finn plays accordion, and their cousin Darragh Manning drums. Oskar Gudinovic plays guitar and keyboards and Aaron Hurley plays bass, both former schoolmates; Kieran Hurley has also played guitar in the group, and press has billed them as both a five- and a six-piece depending on the configuration.
Their first gig was upstairs at An Spailpín Fánach on South Main Street in Cork, and they became regulars at Fred Zeppelins, the rock bar off the Grand Parade. The reference points they cite are local before they are English or American: Rory Gallagher, the Frank and Walters, Sultans of Ping. What critics have heard in the finished music, though, tends to reach further out — Echo and the Bunnymen and Yo La Tengo early on, and later the Pogues, Oasis, Van Morrison and Radiohead.
The early Dublin shows were not well attended. By the band's own account, six people came to the first one.
An EP, a co-sign and a record deal
The self-titled debut EP arrived in June 2024 and did the work. "Roseland" and "Twist and Turn" became the songs people turned up for, and the record drew notice from NME, Stereogum and Rolling Stone UK, which called them the next great guitar band to emerge from Ireland. The most consequential endorsement came from Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C., who named them one of his favourite new bands on BBC 6 Music — a line that followed them into nearly every subsequent piece of coverage.
A standalone single, "Get It", followed on 8 October 2024, recorded with producer Chris Ryan at his Belfast studio. Euan Manning described it as a bridging moment, a song about what went wrong alongside what went right. That autumn the band were playing Pitchfork London, Live at Leeds and Mutations in Brighton, supporting Been Stellar in the UK, and taking their first run at New York.
They signed to So Young Records, the label arm of the London magazine, and placed on the NME 100 list of emerging acts before appearing on the magazine's cover. DIY put them in its Class of 2026.
Masquerade
The debut album was recorded at RAK Studios in London with the producer Shrink, and released on 13 February 2026 through So Young. Four singles trailed it: the title track, "Big Empty Heart", "The Burning of Cork" on 21 October 2025 and "Barbed Wire" on 25 November 2025, with "I Like You" following closer to release. Manning framed the record around removing a facade — the curtain is pulled and cynicism takes its place, he said, and it is easy to be cynical and much harder to be hopeful and genuine.
It is a record with a specific geography. Cork landmarks appear in the lyrics by name — George's Quay, City Hall — and "Barbed Wire" came out of the history of the gaol that stood at South Gate Bridge. "The Burning of Cork" takes the 1920 destruction of the city centre and sets it against the present, drawing a line from British violence in Ireland to Gaza; NME called it the album's high point and the record itself sadly but beautifully in tune with these times. The album is sequenced for vinyl, and the second side goes somewhere grittier and less settled than the first.
Reviews were good rather than unanimous. Mojo scored it 80 and pointed anyone who fell for Fontaines D.C.'s Dogrel in this direction. No Ripcord gave it 85 and praised the rawness and the gothic streak running through what is essentially Irish folk-punk. Writing in the Irish Times on 6 February 2026, Ed Power was cooler, calling the band enthusiastic musical pickpockets and noting that the songs work as lullabies rather than anthems — a criticism and a description at the same time. Masquerade debuted at No. 3 on the Irish Independent Chart, confirmed by Hot Press on 23 February 2026.
The state of the touring
The album came with an Ireland and UK run announced on 25 November 2025 and played in March 2026: Ulster Sports Club in Belfast on 5 March, Live at St Luke's in Cork on 6 March, the Workman's Club in Dublin on 7 March, then Bristol's Exchange on 10 March, the Garage in London on 11 March, the Pink Room at YES in Manchester on 13 March, the Grove in Newcastle on 14 March and King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 15 March. They also played the newly reopened Savoy in Cork that month, and announced a Dublin date at the Button Factory on 18 March.
Domestic recognition arrived alongside. Cillian Murphy named them, with Lisa O'Neill, Lankum and Fontaines D.C., when he appeared on Track Star at the end of March 2026. Richie Kennedy, who has worked with the band, was nominated for the MPG Breakthrough Producer award in the same week.
Autumn 2026 has been spent on the road more or less without a break. The American leg took in the Bowery Ballroom in New York in late September and the Troubadour in West Hollywood on 29 September. Europe followed: La Maroquinerie in Paris on 28 October, Trix Club in Borgerhout on 29 October, the Grote Zaal at Paradiso in Amsterdam on 30 October, LantarenVenster in Rotterdam on 1 November and Frannz Club in Berlin on 3 November. Rotterdam sold out. A UK and Ireland leg runs through the rest of November, including Concorde 2 in Brighton on 9 November and the Electric Ballroom in Camden on 12 November — a room roughly five times the size of the Garage, where they played eight months earlier.
What the band sound like in a room
The consistent note in reviews is that the records undersell the live band. The recorded material is restrained, often slow-burning; the shows are harder and louder, and the accordion that reads as an Irish-trad flourish on the album functions as a lead instrument on stage.
Reviewing the Troubadour show, the Pearl Post described Darragh Manning hitting the drums hard enough to knock cymbals off their stands, Finn Manning playing the accordion with his eyes shut and a leg in the air, and the rest of the band crossing the stage while the lighting stayed stark and white. The same review noted that the band stayed behind afterwards and talked to people properly, including about which bits of the kit had broken that night. Fan comments after the Camden show ran in the same direction, with stage presence the thing most often mentioned.
They are also now part of a cluster of touring acts rather than a one-off; they have shared bills repeatedly with the Galway band NewDad.
The show, now
A Cardinals headline set on the Masquerade tour runs around 50 to 55 minutes — setlist.fm puts the 2026 average at 53 minutes, with roughly two hours between doors and the end of the night once the support has played. The set is effectively the album plus the EP: the Rotterdam show at LantarenVenster on 1 November 2026 ran thirteen songs, opening with "Twist and Turn" and taking in "Anhedonia", "Masquerade", "She Makes Me Real", "St Agnes", "I Like You", "Barbed Wire", "Big Empty Heart", "Over at Last", "The Burning of Cork" and "As I Breathe" before "Roseland". "If I Could Make You Care" has closed other nights as an encore. Staging is minimal — no screens, hard white light and flashes rather than a production — and the band play considerably more forcefully than the record suggests, with Finn Manning's accordion carrying melodies that sit low in the mix on the album. Supports vary by territory; Misfire SD opened the Troubadour show in West Hollywood on 29 September 2026. Reviewers consistently single out Darragh Manning's drumming, which at the Troubadour knocked cymbals off their stands, and the band's habit of staying out front afterwards to talk to people. The weak points flagged by critics are the slower album cuts, which can flatten the middle of a set.
Researched from irishexaminer.com · nme.com · irishtimes.com · hotpress.com · hotpress.com · nme.com · readdork.com · setlist.fm