Cardinals did not rush this record. You can hear that immediately. Masquerade sounds like the product of years spent playing together, falling out of sync, finding it again, and deciding not to sand off the rough parts. It feels settled without sounding complacent, confident without needing to announce it. This is a debut that arrives already aware of its own limits, and comfortable inside them.
The band’s history matters here. Cardinals grew up together in Kinsale, brothers Euan and Finn Manning playing alongside their cousin Darragh Manning and school friends Oskar Gudinovic and Aaron Hurley. They moved to Cork, played shows, learned how rooms react, learned how silence behaves when you let it hang. That long apprenticeship shows up everywhere on Masquerade. Nothing feels rushed. Nothing feels dropped in just to fill space.
She Makes Me Real opens the album in motion rather than statement. It drifts in on a folk sway that feels familiar, almost comforting, then slowly starts to fray. Guitars smear and tighten. The rhythm stumbles forward, then steadies itself. Euan Manning sings like someone already resigned to being heard, which gives the track its quiet authority. The song keeps changing shape, never calling attention to the fact that it’s doing so.
St. Agnes follows with a heavier tread. The drums and bass move with a deliberate, almost ceremonial pace, while the guitars hover and scrape. There’s a bruised quality to it, less dramatic than weary. The track doesn’t push for release, it just keeps going, and that persistence carries neatly into Masquerade. The title track understands the value of space. It holds back. It waits. When the noise finally swells, it doesn’t feel like a payoff, just a pressure valve opening.
Cardinals are good at disguising discomfort. I Like You wears a friendly title and a sticky melody, but Finn Manning’s accordion pulls something anxious through the centre of the song. It sounds upbeat until it doesn’t. The tension never quite resolves, which is the point. Over At Last loosens things slightly, opening into a broader, calmer stretch of sound. It feels like a pause, not a conclusion, the band allowing themselves a few minutes of air before tightening the screws again.
The second half of the record grows sharper and colder. Anhedonia arrives without warmth, guitars brittle and clipped, the band locking into a numb forward motion that never breaks character. There’s no drama here, just repetition and endurance. Barbed Wire brings grit back into the frame, guitars scraping as Manning traces routes through Cork, substances, and states of mind. The city isn’t dressed up or mythologized. It’s just there, walked through and lived in.
Big Empty Heart stands out by doing very little. Folk melody carries the weight, the lyrics landing with a bluntness that doesn’t ask for sympathy. Lines about exhaustion and romantic failure come off almost casually, which makes them hit harder. There’s a dry humour running underneath it, a sense of someone aware of how ridiculous their own misery sounds. The Burning of Cork expands the scale again, drawing on the city’s history of violence without turning it into theatre. The song builds patiently, guitars stacking tension until past and present blur into something unresolved and uneasy.
As I Breathe closes the album by stripping everything back. The vocals are exposed, unguarded, recorded without much between the voice and the room. It doesn’t tidy anything up. It just sits there, breathing, letting the rest of the record echo around it.
What gives Masquerade its weight is time. Cardinals aren’t chasing novelty, and they’re not pretending to be immune to influence. You can hear where these songs come from. You can hear what they love. But the band wears all of it loosely, more interested in pacing and feel than in making a case for themselves. These songs circle, repeat, hesitate, then move on when they’re ready.
This is a debut that sounds like it knows exactly how long it took to get here, and why it couldn’t have arrived any sooner.
Masquerade will be released on February 13, 2026 via So Young Records.
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