Ireland’s Cardinals return today with “Unreal”, their much-anticipated follow-up to last year’s debut single proper, “Roseland”, a song saw them heralded across press for the maturity and fully-formed nature of their sound. The 7″ vinyl, released on tastemaker label So Young, went on to hurriedly sell out within only two hours of its announce.
“Unreal” acts as a direct counterpart to the broodiness of “Roseland”, displaying a fervent, youthful energy and clear pop sensibility at play within the group. Opening with a blast of feedback and followed with real melodic ambition at its heart, these three minutes surely soar.
Frontman Euan Manning had the following to say about the single:
“‘Unreal’ was written in the back of a Ford Transit van that I happened to be living in at the time. It reminds me of warm days spent on the beaches at home back in Cork. I remember learning a Beach Boys song, taking one of the chords from it, and building a whole new song, this one, around it”.
“Unreal”, and “Roseland” before it, follow a self-release, “Amsterdam” and its B-side “The Brow”, uploaded early last year to Bandcamp. Fervent word of mouth spread across Ireland around these tentative releases and the enigmatic early live shows from the six-piece.
Following a filmed performance for Other Voices in their homeland, and the enviable support of Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten, who called them “one of my favourite new bands” during an interview with BBC Radio 1, the band performed for The Great Escape’s First Fifty at the tail end of last year and will now perform at the main festival in May, with their first US performances confirmed to take place before then at SXSW next month.
Today the band have also announced their first headlining tour for the UK & Ireland in May 2024.
Tickets go on sale this Friday at 9am.
UK & Ireland Tour Dates 2024:
May 9th Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
May 11th Yes (Basement), Manchester
May 12th McChullis, Glasgow
May 14th The Windmill, London
May 15th The Joiners, Southampton
May 16th The Great Escape, Brighton
May 24th Róisín Dubh, Galway
May 25th Kasbah Social Club, Limerick
May 26th Cyprus Avenue, Cork
US Festival 2024:
Mar 8th-16th SXSW, Austin, TX
Starting as a light-hearted idea between two sixteen-year-olds in a sleepy fishing town on the southern coast of Ireland, a whole joke-taken-to-heart later and their difference is marked by 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”. Now barely twenty, the six-piece are next in an Irish line changing the sound of 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.
“Unreal”, like “Roseland” before it, was recorded with Richie Kennedy (U2, Interpol) with further music to follow in 2024.
Line-up:
Euan Manning – Guitar and vocals
Kieran Hurley – Guitar
Oskar Gudinovic – Guitar
Aaron Hurley – Bass
Finn Manning – Accordion
Darragh Manning – Drums
