From a small, dark room on the north side of Cork city — a rehearsal space that is “very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer” — Cardinals have emerged with a debut album that appropriately swings from one extreme to the other. Darkness to light. Light to darkness. Hopefulness to despair. Compassion to chaotic indifference. A band forged through both family and friendship — brothers Euan (vocals, guitar) and Finn (accordion) Manning, their cousin Darragh (drums, tambourine, glockenspiel) and their former schoolmates Oskar Gudinovic (guitar) and Aaron Hurley (bass) — the five-piece have already positioned themselves at the vanguard of the Irish independent rock scene. And with Masquerade, they have flung off the shackles of their early influences to craft something entirely their own. “This feels like a natural progression,” says frontman Euan. “The early years feel like a band still finding ourselves and trying different things. Whereas the album’s a bit more cohesive and a little bit more sure of itself.”
