Plus UK Headline Tour with Date in Norwich
Irish five-piece ‘Cardinals’ from Cork share their first new material of 2025 in ‘Big Empty Heart’. Recorded with producer Shrink at RAK Studios, the band’s frontman Euan Manning had the following to say about their dynamic new single, one that set roots long before the band formed:
“Big Empty Heart is a love song written from beyond the grave. It is a waltz as waltzes are the most romantic kinds of songs. Oskar wrote the main melody on a Korg synthesiser when he was 12 and the song is built around that.”
“Big Empty Heart” follows last year’s one-off single “Get It” and before that an acclaimed debut EP for the tastemaker label So Young Records. Those six songs displayed the innate warmth of their songwriting, and “Big Empty Heart” has a similar feel, the cyclical sounds of the accordion adding a traditional element to a song and sound that feels both familiar and at once startlingly new.
Following support from Grian Chatten, who called them “one of my favourite new bands” during an interview with BBC Radio 1, Cardinals have their biggest show yet coming up next month, where they’ll open for Fontaines D.C. at their huge Finsbury Park show on July 5th.
Other notable fans of the group include the actor Cillian Murphy and Belfast’s Kneecap who named the group as one of the artists from Ireland they’re most excited about during a recent interview with the NME.
In August, the band will play with Wunderhorse twice in Dublin before returning to the US in September to support The Pogues in Boston and perform a string of their own headline dates.
The band have also announced a new UK headline tour today for September. Pre-sale begins at 9am Wednesday, 11th June before tickets go on wider sale at 9am on Friday, 13th June.
Cardinals Live Dates
- 5th July – Finsbury Park w/ Fontaines D.C.
- 19th August – Collins Barracks, Dublin w/ Wunderhorse
- 20th August – Collins Barracks, Dublin w/ Wunderhorse
- 7th September – The Stage at Suffolk Downs, Boston, MA w/ The Pogues
- 9th September – Horseshoe, Toronto, ON, CA
- 11th September – Cobra Lounge, Chicago, IL, US
- 13th September – Rickshaw, San Francisco, CA
- 16th September – Zebulon, Los Angeles, CA
- 22nd September – Bristol, Strange Brew
- 23rd September 2025 – Southampton, Joiners
- 25th September 2025 – Norwich, Waterfront Studio
- 26th September 2025 – Leeds, Belgrave
- 27th September 2025- Manchester, Yes Pink Room
- 29th September 2025- Brighton, Patterns
- 30th September 2025 – London, Moth Club
- 15th October – The Curtin, Melbourne
- 16th October – Metro Social, Sydney
More information on Cardinals:
Tracksuited, denim and leather clad and hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses, the Cork five-piece, Cardinals, look like they’ve just stepped out of Warhol’s factory in Midtown Manhattan rather than the picturesque village of Kinsale, and yet to live in a Cardinals song is to be surrounded by a grainy, monochromatic landscape that holds both a gritty rock and roll nostalgia and the rolling hills of Ireland’s traditional musical past.
Their Pogues-leaning, shanty-esque verses swoon into room-filling choruses, and often cloak dark and brooding tales of love in gentle first-person conversational narratives. Their critically acclaimed debut EP Cardinals is an eclectic gothic amalgam of shoegaze, pop, Irish trad folk, and rock which incorporates 60s Wall of Sound and poetry-inflected punk.
Cardinals are:
- Euan Manning – guitar and vocals
- Oskar Gudinovic – guitar
- Aaron Hurley – bass
- Finn Manning – accordion
- Darragh Manning – drums
