Hurley, Gudinovic, and Finn Manning have a smoke before the gig. Before going onstage, the band members each usually throw back a standard libation of “two beers and a stiff drink.” They’re not particular about the specifics: “Something with alcohol in it,” Finn says. “Yeah, that’s the main thing,” Gudinovic agrees.
The band run through their set at a late-afternoon soundcheck. Once they’re onstage, the mood turns “very serious,” as Finn puts it: “We get all our smiles out in the green room.”
Cardinals recorded Masquerade over about two weeks last June at London’s RAK Studios, working with producer Sam Breathwick, a.k.a. Shrink. The sweltering summer weather colored the mood of the sessions, as did political events around the world. “It was an incredible heat wave in London,” Euan says. “The Iran war had just kicked off. I remember reading the newspaper. I had nightmares about it.”
They aimed for a “pretty raw,” mostly live sound when they went into the studio. The bandmates use words like “urgency” and “sloppiness” — even “a kind of laziness” — to describe what they had in mind. “A human touch,” Finn says. “We didn’t want it to sound too polished or anything. There’s a lot of human error in there. That’s part of the core of Masquerade as a record.”
Even so, they spent many hours getting that sound right. “It was long, long days in the studio,” Finn says. “We’d get back quite late, and we’d watch a movie most nights and we’d cook dinner and we’d go to bed — and you couldn’t sleep because it was so hot. So you’d lie in bed ’til about three in the morning, when it would start to cool down, and then you’d be able to sleep, and then you’d be awake at maybe 7:00 or 8:00, and then we would go straight into the studio.” (Pictured: Gudinovic and Euan Manning during soundcheck, with Finn seated at right.)
The great artists who have recorded at RAK before them, from the Smiths to the Pogues, made an impression on Cardinals. “They gave us an acoustic guitar to play with that supposedly ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was recorded on,” Finn says. “I don’t know how true that is. I think that might have been a lie — but ‘Just’ by Radiohead was definitely recorded on that guitar, which is kind of cool.”
Finn’s primary instrument adds a unique atmospheric flourish to Cardinals’ music. “You get some really nice textures,” he says. “You can add a bit of melancholy. It’s a very human instrument; it’s like a pair of lungs. It’s very restrictive, as well, in terms of how it’s tuned, which can make writing more interesting.”
One thing he’d politely like to make very clear, though: The music that Cardinals make is not Celtic rock. “We really don’t like that label,” he says. “We can respect it from a distance, but it’s not us.”
Euan Manning writes all the band’s lyrics, which are often quite literary. “I usually write a chord progression and then a melody, and then the lyrics come after that,” the singer explains. “It comes from lots of different places, whether it’s movies or books or music or just conversations that we have. And a lot of it’s about where we’re from. I find it difficult to write lyrics, so it takes me a long time.”
All of the guys in Cardinals like crime movies; Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy, about “the dark underbelly of Copenhagen,” is a favorite. When they were making Masquerade, they watched Gus Van Sant’s 2003 school shooting drama Elephant (“I remember feeling so sad and hopeless after I watched it,” Finn says), along with lighter fare, like American Pie and Spinal Tap.
Another important fact about their stay in London last summer: They were sober the whole time. “Just to be more productive, I think, and to get a better attitude,” Hurley says. “Me, Oskar, and Darragh got really good at table tennis.”
“The pubs were really bad in that area, as well,” Finn adds, speaking of the ritzy St. John’s Wood neighborhood where RAK is located. “There were two pubs down there, and they’re both fucking terrible.”
The band tapped Samantha Collings, 27, who has played with acts like the mighty Lambrini Girls, to take Darragh Manning’s place behind the drum kit for this six-city U.S. tour. She fit right in, playing with verve and power and adding a dash of punk energy to Cardinals’ songs.
Darragh, who is Euan and Finn’s cousin, hurt his wrist in mid-March after a Cardinals gig in London. They were outside a pub called the Red Dog in Isington when it happened: “We’d been playing pool,” Finn says. “I imagine his wrist became quite tired and strained from playing pool.” (“Also lifting pints, as well,” Gudinovic says.) “So he sat down on the ground, and he sat on his wrist, and it fractured. We’re hoping he doesn’t need surgery.”
Cardinals’ set for this tour mostly follows the Masquerade tracklist, with highlights like the aching, pleading “She Makes Me Real” and the crashing “St. Agnes.” Close listeners might pick up a lyrical and rhythmic nod to Elliott Smith’s 1998 classic “Waltz #2 (XO)” on the latter song: “That’s the man she’s married to now…”
The late songwriter is a major influence on this band, even if it’s not always immediately apparent. “[Smith’s music] had a bigger effect on the writing of our record, maybe, than you might see at first glance,” Euan says.
Cardinals are a well-read band. “We’re all pretty big readers,” says Finn, who studied English at university. “We always have a variety of books that we bring on tour.”
Their favorite authors include mid-20th-century Irish modernist Flann O’Brien. “It’s dark and funny,” Euan says of O’Brien’s writing. “I think there’s an element of that on the album. I don’t think all of it needs to be taken completely seriously. There is some element of satire in the lyrics.”
(From left: Euan Manning, Finn Manning, Aaron Hurley, and Oskar Gudinovic.)
Contemporary Irish author Kevin Barry is another top Cardinals pick. They love his 2011 novel City of Bohane, which is set during a gang war in an imagined future Ireland circa 2053.
They cite Barry’s influence on Cardinals songs like the decadently catchy “Barbed Wire.” “I just tried to paint specifically the south side of our city with something new and fresh that felt more fairytale-ish and Gothic,” Euan says. “We wanted to do what Kevin Barry did in some of his books, and just make the city feel a little bit more interesting for ourselves again.”
Cardinals at Main Drag, from left: Euan Manning, Finn Manning, Aaron Hurley, Oskar Gudinovic
Cardinals often relax with a pre-show playlist featuring local acts from the place they’re in. Before this NYC show, they were thinking about putting on something by salsa legend Willie Colón or Wu-Tang Clan.
Cardinals favor harsh backlighting that silhouettes them onstage when they perform. “That’s because we’re quite insecure about our looks,” Finn says, half-jokingly. “We put up the lights behind us, so you can’t see our faces, just like headlights… Also, all of us have really bad stage fright. So we’re always quite anxious onstage.”
After an opening set from New York shoegaze act Smush, Cardinals get right into it with an energetic performance of “Twist and Turn,” from their self-titled 2024 EP, on which Finn plays tambourine. “It’s a very skilled instrument,” he says.
The murder ballad “Anhedonia” is one of Euan’s favorite songs to perform. “It’s kind of ruined for me though, because someone on our TikTok called ‘Anhedonia’ the only track he doesn’t like on the album,” Finn says.
The band members don’t say much onstage, but they don’t need to. They hold the audience’s attention closely with their stoic looks and all-in performances. The crowd at Main Drag was full of Cardinals diehards who knew all the words to songs like Masquerade’s title track and the older fan favorite “Roseland.”
“We like to play really loud,” Finn says.
“As loud as possible,” Hurley adds.
But they find that their fans are usually too focused on the stage to get moving.
“We don’t pull much of the dancing crowd, so we’re working on that,” Finn says.
“Next album,” Hurley says.
“Yeah,” Finn agrees. “We’re going to do a dance record next.”
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