Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds 26th September 2025
For the jaded older gig-goer, it’s not often something genuinely different turns up and the best you can hope for is energy or skills. Cardinals are that something different, presenting songs in a new and clever way, with arrangements that cast a new set of shadows and make for a fascinating sound.
These are relatively straight forward love songs; “Don’t change your hair for me, not if you care for me”. Those lyrics were old when Sinatra sang Rodgers & Hammerstein’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ in the nineteen-fifties and they are delivered in a passionately serious yet abashed way by Euan Manning, with his heavy duty eyebrows adding to the intense vocal expression. There are other little lyric lifts elsewhere, like a Pogues couplet in ‘Roseland’ but this reflects on Euan’s passion for soulful thoughts. Yet, despite some songs that are straight rock with melodic deep bass, a lot of the sound is genuinely new.
There are two guitars and an accordion; widening the possibilities of the band. Obviously, the two guitars add melodic capacity but Aaron Hurley’s bass is played as an additional melodic voice instead of the traditional repetitive rhythm and ‘St Agnes’ rises from its quiet start on the bass tune. Aaron also runs an oscillator that adds rich strangeness. ‘As I Breath’ shows off Darragh Manning’s smart drums, which rata-tat-tat like a machine gun. Elsewhere, the martial sharpness of the drums punch hard and divert from lazy expectations. The accordion is the great surprise. While working as a keyboard sound occasionally, it is way beyond the wheezy backdrop it is relegated to in other bands. Here it is a passionate lead instrument and a live audience can see that on Finn Manning’s face in the discordant lead parts he plays and especially in the solo he takes in the closing ‘If I Could Make You Care’.
Though sometimes hackneyed lyrically and hanging around with Indie bands, Cardinals are a musically powerful expression of the possibilities of genre-based rock music. Not just another indie band, this is a new force pushing out from Ireland.
