The Cardinals claim they lacked confidence to break into the Cork music scene, but bravery pays, and their national tour lands at the Róisín Dubh this Friday, May 24.
Starting as a light-hearted idea between two sixteen-year-olds in a sleepy fishing town on the south coast, the band attemptd 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."
Only half a decade later and the six-piece band is a strong sound in Irish 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.
Following a filmed performance for Other Voices, and the support of Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten, who called them "one of my favourite new bands" during an interview with Radio 1, Cardinals play the Róisín this week, with support from Adore.
Ticktes €12/€10 from www.roisindubh.net
